Christmas and New Year's 2009

This was our first Christmas together! Last year we spent it with our own families, then Jesse went down to Mexico for the week of New Years. It was also Jesse's first Christmas without snow! It was a bit tough to get into the xmas spirit when everyone is walking around in shorts and sandals (not jandals, damn kiwis). We had a quiet Christmas morning and opened gifts, then went down to the beach for a BBQ!






We had a quiet New Year's too. Jesse cooked up some tasty salmon for dinner then we watched the fireworks (set off from Sky Tower).

Waiheke Island, New Zealand - Dec 2009

This was our first excursion out of Auckland. We took the ferry over to Waiheke Island and spent 2 days lazing on the beautiful beaches. We couldn't have asked for better weather. The sun was shining the entire time. Jesse pulled out his sandals for the first time since we left Cancun! He wore shoes the entire trip because they were more comfortable for all the walking. His feet were so white it looked like he was still wearing socks! True to form, he forgot to put sunblock on them and burnt them to a crisp! He had to wear socks in his sandals the last day because they were too sore to walk! hahaha




We ate lunch at a great restaurant on the beach and enjoyed the incredible view and some delicious fish and chips. This is living!

Auckland, New Zealand - Oct 2009 to Dec 2009

Our flight to Auckland was pretty exhausting. We spent all day Tuesday, Oct 13th touring London. We didn't really get any sleep because we finished packing when we got back to the hostel and had to leave before 5am to get to the airport on time. We spent a couple hours in the airport then had a 12 hour flight down to LA. We had a 12 hour wait in LA. We originally hoped we could leave the airport and see some of the city, but it was pouring rain. We didn't want to rent a car didn't trust depending on public trasport, so we didn't venture too far. After the long wait we had another 12 hour flight into Auckland... When we arrived it was 10am on Wednesday (talk about a long day! 42 hours so far).

We took a bus into town and walked to our hostel (man there's a lot of hills in Auckland!!). We stayed at Freeman's Lodge for our first 5 nights. Seema, the owner/manager was amazing! She helped us with everything from getting our IRD numbers (required to work in NZ) to recommending restaurants and areas to live in. We found a great place in Ponsonby and moved in the following week.

Here are some of the random pics we took during our first couple months here:

London, UK - Oct 12, 2009

We didn't originally plan to spend time in London, we knew we would be making a flight connection there, but the way the seat sales worked out, we ended up having 1 full day to sight-see. Needless to say, it was a pretty exhausting day!

We took a cab to the airport in Madrid around 5:00am. We found a cheap flight to London with Ryanair. We must have been pretty tired to begin with, Jesse forgot his hat in the cab, haha. We landed in London around 9am at Standsted airport, so we had to take bus into the city centre. This took about an hour. Then we hopped on the subway to check into our hostel. We had booked one that was closer to Heathrow airport since we had an early flight the next morning.

By the time we got there, checked in and dropped off our bags it was already noon, so we knew we had to rush to see as much as we could.

We hopped back on the train and started at Buckingham Palace:

From here we walked through St. James' Park on our way to River Thames. The park was very lovely, with a ton of birds and squirrels everywhere. Here are some big fat pelicans:




Next we visited Westminster Abbey and the Houses of Parliament:





Of course a shot of Big Ben:
Here's the iconic London Eye, just across the river from the Parliament Buildings:

From here we walked along the river and made a stop for some fish and chips!







After our late lunch/early supper, we continued walking along the river to the Tower Bridge.





It was starting to get kind of late, so we didn't have time to tour the Tower of London. We hopped back on the train and stopped at Piccadilly Circus. We spent the evening walking around the busy streets in Soho.


A display outside Ripley's Believe it or Not:

That was about all we could get in for our day in London. We sleepily headed back to our Hostel and caught a few hours of sleep and got up at 4:30 to head to the airport to catch our flight to Los Angeles!

We probably already complained about our flight to most of you, but for those that didn't get an earful, here's some more, haha. Flying from London to Auckland was VERY tiring! After our full day in London and very little sleep we headed to the airport (a couple hours early of course), then had an 11 hour flight to LA. Then we had a 12 hour stop-over! We were hoping to catch the bus into Hollywood or Santa Monica, but it was pouring rain so we ended up not going... After the long wait (and no sleep) we hopped on another plane and flew 12 more hours to Auckland! When we landed it was 10am...

Basically we slept for 4 or 5 hours then were awake for almost 48 hours (not counting the bit of sleep during our 23 hours in the air). On top of that we were very jet-lagged from jumping 13 time zones. Now, I hope you can understand why we pretty much slept for our first 2 days in Auckland, haha.