Photo blogs for two previous All Classical tours

Krakow Castle

Brandenburg Gate

In Pursuit of Chopin, 2010

Poland, Czech Republic, and Germany

Irish castle

  Walter Scott Memorial  

Ireland and Scotland, 2011

Our Kiwi Journey Begins

This blog chronicles the events and sights of All Classical's cultural tour of New Zealand and a bit of Australia from November 3 through 17, 2012.

We departed Portland on Saturday, November 3, and arrived in Auckland, New Zealand, on Monday, November 5. Sunday for us was fleeting, lasting from about midnight to about 2:30 a.m., when we crossed the international dateline and suddenly it was Monday.  Coming back, we'll have a really long Saturday, November 17, as we cross the date line in the other direction.


Prepared for a long trip.

  

On the plane from Portland to San Francisco

The group gathers in San Francisco, now including some who flew there from places other than Portland.

Waiting for the Air New Zealand flight to Auckland.  Our plane was a Boeing 777, and was quite comfortable.

It's 3 a.m. in some timezone.  Do you know where your seat is?

The navigation display shows Asia and most of the Pacific in darkness as we approach Auckland sometime after 3 a.m.

The track of our aircraft has been pretty much a straight line (or rather, a great circle route) since shortly after we left San Francisco.

We landed on time and went through customs and immigration without incident except for one passport that was inadvertently left on the plane (it was found after several searches).

Our guide, Julianne (center) and our driver, Erin (right) were waiting for us as we exited customs.

The sun was rising as we left the airport building to board our bus.

Looking up interesting places to go in Auckland.

Caught in the act of doing Yoga to counter the effects of the 12-hour flight

Rydges Hotel (pronounced Ridges) was extremely nice.

This tower dominates the city Skyline.  It's about two block from our hotel, and we're to go up into it on Monday and have dinner at a restaurant at the top on Monday evening.

In the hotel, we could connect to All Classical via the internet.

It was now Monday morning.  Some of our hotel rooms were ready, some were not. After a couple of hours down time, we boarded our bus for a tour of Auckland.  That story is in the next blog post.