Time travel is exhausting

I don’t know how the Doctor does it. We left Auckland, flew for nearly 12 hours, arrived in San Francisco well before we left New Zealand, and then flew out of San Fran for Vancouver the same time we left New Zealand at. Confusing, and exhausting. At least, it is in cattle class. Damned if I can sleep upright, and while the temperature inside the plane was warmer than outside (which the little TV screen assured me cheerily was -55⁰C), I’m not entirely convinced that it was much warmer. I gave up trying to sleep about 3am and watched What We Do in the Shadows (hilarious), Mrs Brown’s Boys D movie (loved the TV show; gave up the movie after 20 minutes) and then most of a season of Nurse Jackie. There are worse ways to spend a flight across the Pacific.

 

No wonder visitors remark on how green New Zealand is, and how unpopulated. This is the view that greets them as they fly into our biggest city.

 

The stop-over in San Fran was interesting, not least because the offspring of three siblings were in the city, and didn’t meet up. My cousin Andy (son of my Dad’s sister Jeanette) was here from Sydney on business, but had pre-work arrangements. My cousin Lisa (daughter of Dad’s sister Nita) lives here and had planned to come out and say hi. However, she is a very talented artist and had to spend the morning setting up for her latest gallery exhibition, with no idea of how long that would take. Combine that with neither of our laptops or cell phones wanting to talk to the Wi-Fi at SFO, and my not having slept for over 24 hours, it just wound up in the too hard basket. We did get to see a stunning Tiffany's exhibition.

Flight to Vancouver was smooth, Air Canada staff were the loveliest human beings on the planet, and the plane was pretty empty, so as soon as the seat-belt sign went off, boo yah, I grabbed two hours of precious sleep. Vancouver airport is lovely - very arty, lots of Inuit (or Inuit-inspired) artwork that had many similarities to Maori art.

 

Gorgeous carving at Vancouver Airport, just one of the stunning artworks scattered throughout.

 We had dinner there - which reminded us of the number one rule for Kiwis dining out in North America … order one meal between two. My plate alone had more rice than I cook for three at home.

 

Seriously, North Americans, one human being does not need this much rice at one sitting.

 

We are now happily ensconced at Days Inn Vancouver and about to crash hard for the night. I do have six episodes of Season 2 of The Originals crying out to be watched, but dang, you just can’t stop at one, it’s after 11pm, and I’ve had two hours sleep in about 48 hours. Best not to risk it. GOOD NIGHT ALL!