Day 1 - Thursday 29th June - Travel to the USA

 Day 1 - Thursday 29th June

Travel to the USA

Weather: Cloudy with sunny spells - cool

We set off this morning at 10:00am to get to the Hamilton bus station so that I could get the Intercity bus to Auckland Airport at 11:30 am.

I had a good comfortable trip all the way up and arrived at 1:30 pm. I got my bag checked in and my boarding pass and then went up stairs to security and the departure lounge where I kicked my heels till 6:00 pm and went through to Gate 17 to be boarded.

The flight was pretty event free, but I made a mistake in having a coffee after dinner at about 9:00 pm and couldn't get to sleep after that. Then my eyes got tired trying to watch movies so I had to give that up and just had to sit and wait in the dark till we got to JFK airport in New York. I didn't feel comfortable for the whole trip but it was my own fault.

Going through security at JFK was surprisingly easy. I got out into the Arrivals area and there was Ian waiting - great to see him again! The old JFK car park is undergoing a marked change since the last time Mary-Ann and I were there. We had to get a shuttle bus to where Ian had parked his car. It took about 20 minutes to get there through a spaghetti of motorways!

I had forgotten how far it was from the airport to Ian's place. The traffic was non-stop and the air was full of smokey haze from the forest fires in Canada! 

Got back to 16 Viking Lane at about 9:00 pm and met Kristy. She looks just the same! The kids were all in bed!