Auckland, New Zealand

 Sunday, February 16

 So it seems we love our red-eyes!!!

We originally had a flight from Toronto that gave us a 2 hour layover in Vancouver.  Then Air Canada changed our flight time so we only had a 1.5 hour layover. We weren't comfortable with that, so we changed our 8 pm flight to a 6:30 pm flight (we lost our good seats by doing that).  But our 6:30 flight left almost an hour late (sigh) and after 5 hours we arrived in Vancouver at 9 pm local.   

It took us half an hour to walk to our new gate in Vancouver, but we didn't have to check in or go through security, so we ended up having lots of time after all.  But better safe than sorry.

The Vancouver airport is quite nice.  We found a prayer room, a "quiet" room, a yoga room, and an open air atrium.

Then a 14.5 hour flight to Auckland.  We left on February 14 and were in the air for all of February 15.  Arrived in New Zealand on February 16 at 11 am local.  

THERE IS AN 18 HOUR TIME DIFFERENCE!!!!  WOW!!! 

We made it!  We arrived in Auckland at 11 am their time, no idea what time that is back home!  I think you guys are still on February 15.  So we are writing this from your future ha ha.

A driver picked us up at the airport and took us to our hotel, which was nice.  The hotel was a half hour drive.  

Rather than crashing at the hotel, which is what we wanted to do, we had booked a tour to force us to get out and about and try to adjust to the time difference.

We booked a 90 minute tour of the Auckland Weta Workshop.  

imagecredit: https://weta-workshop-unleashed.wheree.com/

What is Weta?  They are a company that designs props and costumes etc for the film industry (movies and tv).  They have been around for almost 40 years, and of course the one in New Zealand has done work for The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit.  They've also done movies such as Avatar, King Kong, The Chronicles of Narnia, and The Planet of the Apes.

Our tour was booked for 3:10 pm, but our fuzzy brains really didn't know what we were doing, and we showed up at 2:10 pm.  We tried to get in on that tour, but it was full, so they said we could have a 2:30  tour.  The 2:30 tour was reserved for Mandarin speaking groups, but no one booked it, so we ended up getting a private tour just the 2 of us and our guide, which was awesome! 

The tour was 90 minutes long and took us through different workshops of 3 creative concept movie sets:  one horror, one fantasy, and one sci-fi.  There were a lot of hands on things we could try, like remotely controlling robotic creatures or creating tin foil sculptures.

It took us awhile to find a place to eat supper, no one here likes to eat early.   But what they do like is to smell particularly "pretty" ugh. 

Well, we have fallen asleep a dozen times getting this blog written, so even though it's only 6:30 pm here, we are calling it a night!