Day 20 - Saturday 4/2

We woke up to more gorgeous views over Lake Tekapo, before starting literally the longest day of our lives.

We had about a two hour drive into Christchurch (where we were supposed to spend our last two nights, but had a change of plans due to their major earthquake before our departure). As we were driving to return our rental car, we heard on the radio that the city had just registered a 4.1 earthquake ... which none of us felt.

Here's us after we returned Bruce:

As the rental car guy drove us to the airport, Ryan used the phrase "sweet as" - I don't remember what he said, but we thought it was way funnier than the driver did.

Once at the airport, Ryan made Dana put her sling on to gain sympathy from the lady checking us in for the flight. It worked - she checked all our bags for free and got us 4 seats in a row so Dana wouldn't get jostled around on the flight. Ryan shows off his leg room: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hpp-o0RftRs

We flew Christchurch to Auckland to LA to Denver to Minneapolis. D&R's friend Ben picked us up and got us back to the Bohlens' house where we all crashed. I made the drive back to Madison the next day (and experience my second flat tyre/tire in a week!). It was an amazing trip! I miss the mountains ...

For more pictures from our trip, check out the two albums linked from this post: http://kellytmiller.blogspot.com/2011/12/new-zealand-recap.html

Comments

Mike (Papa) said…

thanks for sharing your wonderful trip with us. LOVE all the photos; hope to visit NZ some day

December 5, 2011 at 10:23 AM

Travel day

Monday. We really lucked out on weather the first 6 days. The last 3 were definitely not great for the pools. Today was sunny again and it’s amazing how much warmer it felt while we were walking around. We got up and packed and headed out before 9 to try to catch a feeding. Never saw a feeding but wandered through the aquariums again. Breakfast at Shake Shack. Up over the rope bridge again. Got our luggage and checked out at 11 and caught our shuttle to the airport. The ride to the hotel seemed to be on major roads, but the ride back to the airport seemed to take us through a ton of small rundown streets. We did go past the US Embassy and a few hospitals as well. The line for TSA was long but went pretty fast and we cleared customs quickly. I got a Starbucks (coffee for me, pastries for the girls) and the girls colored in the gate area. Flight was easy and the girls discovered they could play tic tac toe against each other on the screens in the seats. We made it ...

Lauterbrunnen and Mürren, updated

Lauren and I are reading books, Jeff's at the laundromat. Really good day today. 21,000 steps! We're pooped! Walked thru the Lauterbrunnen valley, so beautiful. Wonderful day for it, too. Then up a cable car to Murren. I will post more later, but my phone battery is low and I'm going to try to get Lo to sleep. Update: Yesterday was awesome. Jeff said it was his favorite hike, I still think Mannlichen too Kleine Scheidegg is my fave, but this was a very close second. Started with breakfast again. L ate more pancakes, I got a fried egg and a roll with Nutella. Yum! Ooh, and the coffee, so good. Then a nap for L and we got packed for the day. Caught the noon train to Lauterbrunnen. It was our first time leaving the station there; we've changed trains there a ton, but never left the platform. Town was really nice, and we had a gorgeous sunny day. The first waterfall is just outside of the main drag and then we got on what a blog I read called "a ...

Mannlichen

So last night we went to an Italian steakhouse/ pizza place for dinner called Sina's. We kept Lauren entertained with several of those really long skinny hard breadsticks (Mom, remember when you used to buy those for us?) and then when our anti pasta plate arrived (ham, salami, cheese, pickles (they seem to love pickles here!) and really tasty) the waiter (I think he was the owner) looked right at her sitting in Jeff's lap, said "this is for you" and set it right in front of her...a split second later she had both hands smack in the middle of the plate. Pretty funny, wish I'd gotten a picture. Jeff had pizza for dinner, I had spaghetti alla carbonara (good, but not as good as yours, Mom). Lauren sat in our laps until our main course came and then sat pretty happily in her stroller next to me, as long as I kept putting pasta in her mouth! Dinner was really good, probably amplified by the fact it was only our second real meal of the trip and neither of us had lunch....

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