San Diego, CA

Saturday, February 8

“Can you believe it’s really happening?” Tory said to me as we settled into our seats aboard a flight to San Diego, California Saturday afternoon. ”Pinch me” moment, for sure. After months of planning, our family of four is about to embark on an epic adventure through New Zealand’s beautiful North & South Islands.

Our plan to get there: a 12 hour flight from LAX > Auckland, New Zealand … first, with a quick stop-over in San Diego as it was cheaper to fly from our home base in Minneapolis to San Diego than it was to fly directly into Los Angeles. Andi and I also thought it might be easier to break up the flying time a bit by staying in San Diego for a night before the really long overnight flight to Auckland.

On Saturday, Andi’s dad drove us to the Minneapolis airport and we landed in San Diego around 8:00pm PST. It proved to be a good 3-hour “practice” flight with the kids to grease our traveling wheels again. Turns out, we didn’t have the right headphones packed in our carry-on, Tory was unsettled because she didn’t have the TV shows she wanted downloaded to her iPad, and Aden was fussing about wearing his new glasses with headphones. Talk of the coronavirus all over the news had me barking at the kids to “wash their hands” and “don’t touch anything” every few minutes. After our flight, we rented a car and drove to a hotel for the night.

By the time we arrived at the Hilton Garden Inn in Old Town San Diego, it was close to 10:00pm & we were exhausted and hungry. I checked the kids into our hotel room while Andi ran out to pick up Chick-fil-A for dinner. “Oh, good! We get to eat chicken nuggets in bed,” Aden said. The kids settled into to watch Puppy Dog Pals while I re-packed items in our carry-on. Tomorrow is the real test when we fly across the world.

Sunday, February 9

Andi and I were awake at 5:00am with the time change. I snuck out of our room to workout in the hotel gym while Andi stayed with our sleeping kids, and then we all went down to breakfast inside the hotel around 7:00am. Apparently, our eyes were bigger than our stomaches because Tory and Aden loaded their plates with waffles, chocolate muffins, fruit and bacon. No way they could eat it all!

After breakfast, we drove through San Diego’s Mission Beach while Andi told stories of another lifetime when he lived in California and visited friends living in San Diego. We made our way to La Jolla Cove and parked our rental car to walk around the park and look at the sea lions. In planning this layover, Andi and I had envisioned soaking up the California sun for the day, but that didn’t turn out to be the case. The air temperature was chilly in the high 50’s made colder by the wind on the water. The kids didn’t mind, of course. They climbed on trees and watched the sea lions sprawled on the rocks by the ocean. Eventually, it started to rain so we darted back to our rental car in the parking lot.

Andi realized we forgot the SD card for our camera, so we stopped by Best Buy to get one. Parking was nuts in La Jolla — so many people everywhere! I guess we’ve been living in the Wisconsin woods too long. We definitely aren’t used to that anymore. After Best Buy, we went to a local Great Clips to have Aden’s hair cut.

Next, we hit the highway for Los Angeles. We weren’t sure what traffic would be like on a Sunday afternoon so we allowed plenty of time to get to the airport. Andi said it could take anywhere from 2-4 hours depending on road conditions. Fortunately, traffic wasn’t terrible and we had enough time left to stop somewhere for lunch. We picked True Food Kitchen in the Santa Monica Promenade so we could walk around a little bit too. It was still raining, or otherwise we’d have gone to the beach.

At True Food Kitchen, we ate lunch — Andi and Tory ordered pizza and Aden and I shared a chicken teriyaki bowl. The food and service was very good! We had time leftover for the kids to play at the indoor playground by the food court. It feels like an end of an era that Tory and Aden are getting too old for these play structures. They ran around for a few minutes before coming back to tell us they were ready to leave.

We stopped by a bakery on our way out of the Santa Monica Promenade — Andi ordered an espresso and the kids got cups of gelato. We enjoyed the treats and then headed for LAX. On the drive there, Andi warned the kids how nuts the airport would likely be. He advised them to stay close to use and practice patience as we’d likely be standing in long lines over the next 24 hours. When we decided to travel to New Zealand, Andi applied for an extended stay travel visa which had yet to be approved due to the coronavirus health outbreak (apparently the NZ visa office is in Beijing), and Andi worried we might encounter an issue getting boarding passes for our flight. No troubles though — it didn’t take long to check in for our New Zealand Airlines flight. We even had enough time to walk over to the LAX domestic flights airport terminal to meet up with Andi’s sister Lindsay who happened to be flying in at the same time for work meetings.

We said good-bye to Lindsay and walked back to the international airport terminal. It was a little un-nerving seeing so many people wearing medical masks over their faces to protect themselves from germs. Andi and I wondering ourselves if we should be doing something more to protect our family.

We had plenty of time to spare by the time we arrived at our gate, so we walked around to kill time. Andi bought Aden child-size earbuds to wear with his new glasses. Yesterday he complained his headphones pushed on the frames and hurt his head.

For this long overnight flight, Andi upgraded us to Air New Zealand SkyCouches. These special seats have leg rests that fold up to make a flat bed. Andi and Tory shared a SkyCouch and Aden and I shared. It was amazing how much more comfortable the SkyCouches made the flight! The airline served dinner around 11:00pm and then we made our seats into a bed and slept for most of the 12 hour flight.

The four of us woke up a few times throughout the 12-hour flight, but overall the SkyCouches made a long overnight flight much more bearable. The airline served breakfast about two hours before we landed in Auckland, NZ.

Monday, February 10 / Tuesday, February 11

Andi and I worried once more that we might have trouble entering into New Zealand with a pending extended stay travel visa, but we had no issues. As citizens from the USA, we are automatically allowed to stay in New Zealand for 90 days. Passing though Customs was smooth sailing.

It was now 7:00am in Auckland on Tuesday, February 11. Somewhere over the ocean, we’d crossed the international date line. We grabbed our bags and walked to the domestic airline terminal to catch one last flight from Auckland (located on NZ’s North Island) to Christchurch (located on NZ’s South Island). The temperature was beautiful outside — 68 and sunny. Perfect!

We checked in with JetStar Airlines for our one-hour flight to Christchurch. Originally, Andi and I contemplated staying in Auckland overnight (we weren’t sure if we’d all be zombies from flying overnight), but we felt fairly rested and like we could take on one more hour-long flight. We were also ready to put the flying behind us and excited to start our adventures on the South Island.

Tory was reaching hangry status by the time we arrived at our gate for Christchurch and that’s a mood none of particularly enjoy, so we stopped to get her some food at a chicken & waffles breakfast place called Orleans in the airport food court. Aden ordered a rainbow bagel with Nutella at Ugly Bagels. There’s not much a big ol’ serving of Nutella can’t fix for our kiddos! I ordered a black coffee which is called a “long black” here. It’s basically an Americano — espresso poured over hot water. We’d heard the coffee is very good in New Zealand and so far that proved to be so.

A few differences we’ve noticed about New Zealand already — We knew New Zealanders drive on the opposite side of the road, but that’s true for walking too. Andi kept bumping into people in the airport because he was walking on the wrong side of the hallway. Restrooms are on the opposite side of each other, too. The Women’s is on the left; Men’s on the right. It also feels strange to travel somewhere new where everyone looks like us, signs are written in English, and there’s no haggling. We’re accustomed to traveling in Central America where that’s not the case.

The one-hour flight to Christchurch was uneventful. Tory and Aden were getting antsy by the end and starting to fight with each other. I was glad to get to our destination and be done with airports for a while!

Now, the next challenge — to stay awake all day! New Zealand is 16 hours ahead of Wisconsin, USA so our plan today is to “see the sights” as Aden says in Christchurch. Let the adventure begin!