We had a good, albeit long, flight home, starting with a 3 hour flight from Christchurch to Sydney, 7.5 hours from Sydney to Singapore and the final long 13.75 hours from Singapore to London. It came as a surprise to us to find that we were routed over Kabul, Turkenistan and other such remote and/or dangerous places!! We flew with Quantas in their big Airbus 380-800, and it is seriously big. It seems to amble down the runway and although from the inside you cannot believe it has the speed to take off, it glides gently upwards and stays there!. I was assured that it is the safest plane to fly in at the moment because, of course. I still recall, that morning (I think it was in September) when the news reported the emergency landing of one such plane operated by Quantas shortly after taking off from Singapore when an engine caught fire and the entire fleet was grounded for several weeks. Indeed I did not recall having heard that they had been cleared to fly, but clearly they had. With my new found confidence in flying (an interesting and welcome by-product of this trip), I took this in my stride.
We arrived back to a rather grey London and Sussex, freezing temperatures and a mountain of post! As you probably gathered, we loved every minute of our amazing trip but it was lovely to be home.
A big thank you to all our friends and family who shared our trip in some way, whether by keeping a regular eye on with the house and relations, meeting up with us in Australia or NZ, reading our blog and otherwise keeping in touch. We look forward to sharing our experiences with you in person suitably accompanied by some NZ wine, but will endeavour to prepare a suitably shortened version of our photos for you (the full suite exceeds 2,000!)
And finally ......................... do put NZ on your list of places to go to. You will love it and you will receive a very warm welcome.
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