After a relaxing morning we headed to Napier airport and booked in - 70kg over - they reduced it to 30kg for us = $95. Great to see family and friends to farewell us and finally the time came to board. After a 30 minute delay we arrived in Auckland to be met by our friend Ian Ellis. We headed over to International and checkin at Emirates. We were 30kg over here - $27 per kg and NO ALLOWANCES for anyone, not even US!!!! So instead of the $800 odd charge - which we would have to pay on each of 3 flights = $2400approx. Deane and Ian headed over to purchase a new suitcase while Zach Sam Bri and I emptied all the UNNECESSARY STUFF from our bags on to the floor in the corner of the checkin area to reduce the kgs. We headed to the other end of the airport to weigh the bags and thought we had it sorted - not quite when we recheckin we were still 10kgs OVER!!!! Ian your calculations werent quite right!!!! Anyway I think finally the lady felt sorry for us and gave us some bags to pack Zachs clothing into so that we could complete checkin, by this time Ian had disappeared with a suitcase of UNNECESSARY items to return to St Georges Rd for a year!!!!
We were extremely tired by now and the kids were hungry, it was 5.15pm, flight left at 6pm and we decided to get the kids a QUICK McD meal - we thought quick anyway. We headed through Departure to be greeted by a man " there are people looking for you!!! WHAT?? anyway that didnt mean they would hurry. We finally got through and as we were heading through the scanners they took Zachs skateboard deck - to be confiscated FOREVER - as it could be used as a dangerous weapon O NO we couldve checked it through with the luggage - no one told us so Zach has the trucks and NO deck!!!! and NO deodorant either - he forgot to remove it from his bag!!! anyway after a 800m dash we finally go ton the plane with 5 minutes to spare! As we got seated they closed the door and the plane startted to taxi off down the runway.
