Walsh Family Adventures: Survived the Long Trip To New Zealand

North Carolina is on the other side of the world from New Zealand. Traveling without kids to lands down under is grueling enough. We had to bring our two children (11 months and 4 years) and enough stuff for ~2 month stay from the airport in Greenville, NC to our hotel in the Central Business District of Auckland. This was truly an epic family adventure/ordeal.

We headed to Auckland first (before going on to Wellington) because J.P. was giving a presentation at a major geology conference (GEONZ). This apparently was the largest geology conference ever to occur in NZ, and there is much excitement and interest in geology because of the recent earthquake that hit Christchurch, NZ. More on that later.

Here's our basic itinerary:

Truck ride to airport (Thanks, Reide!)

Greenville, NC to Charlotte, NC

Charlotte to Los Angeles

LA to Auckland

Shuttle bus to our hotel downtown

Two elevator rides and long hallway to our room

(our luggage cart wouldn't fit out of the elevator on the 1st try)

We left at about 1 PM (Eastern Time) on 11/18 and arrived at 9 AM on 11/20 (NZ Time). In total, the trip probably took about 26 hours, and it didn't help that several of us weren't feeling well.

The amount of luggage we ended up carrying was impressively large/ridiculous:

Checked:

2 large backpacks,

1 large suitcase,

2 bags with car seats,

1 pink rolleraboard suitcase.

Carry on:

1 overloaded diaper bag,

1 overflowing zipperless sack,

1 small pink backpack,

1 large stroller

1 "small" backpack filled with 2 computers, a hardrive, 3 cameras and various papers, pens and cables.

Amazingly, we had no baggage fees!

We made it without any major problems, and our two girls, Molly and Emma, really behaved quite well (although I'm sure the people around us might not agree!). The worst part was being assigned seats scattered around the plane on the Charlotte-LAX connection and then ending up being crammed together in the last row by the toilet. The best part was that we were able to check into our hotel early, allowing us to get showered and changed after the long journey. But, I think our saving grace was that the long flight (13hr) on Air New Zealand had us sitting together behind a bulkhead with lots of leg room and a basinet in which Molly could sleep. We are thrilled to have made it to New Zealand!