We celebrated Christmas with the whole family on December 21st and on the 23rd we got on a plane to Queenstown New Zealand for our New Zealand cruise.
Eric took us to the San Jose airport and then turned around and took Monica and Jake to the San Francisco airport for their flight to Minneapolis. Now Eric can enjoy a quiet and peaceful home.
There were surprisingly few people in the airports and the airports were very calm but our planes had no empty seats. We were worried we may be stranded at Los Angeles airport(LAX) because they were expecting flooding conditions in Los Angeles. We didn’t need to worry- we just had a bit of turbulence going into and out of LAX.
We had smooth flying from San Jose, California to Los Angeles, California to Sydney, Australia to Queenstown, New Zealand. Funny thing when we landed at Los Angeles airport, the flight crew said “keep your seatbelts on or we can’t taxi to the gate” but when we landed in Sydney the flight crew said “the seatbelt signs have been turned off” and then we taxied about 5 minutes to the gate!
We landed at Queenstown about 10 minutes early on December 25th and collected our luggage and rental car and set off on our 4ish hour drive to Dunedin, New Zealand. It’s Christmas Day and all the stores were closed and the streets are empty in the towns we drove through. Tibor did see 2 cafes open and we stopped to purchase fresh cherries at a self-service fruit stand. There were goats and white dots (sheep) on the hillsides and raptors flying in the sky. The cows were so clean and the white parts so shiny a couple of times I thought one was a statue until they moved.
We found Larnach castle easily and checked in. It’s wonderful, our room is in the stables and we have shared bathrooms. To get to our room, we go thru a large red stable door which opens into the breakfast room. Just inside the door is a horse. It’s plastic but every time I see it, it seems real for a moment. Our room is up the stairs above the breakfast room.
We knew we couldn’t have their special Christmas dinner because it started before we arrived and would finish after we had to leave for our penguin tour. We did get a wonderful charcuterie board and we were very happy to have ‘real’ food after so much airport/airplane food. We enjoyed the special box of Christmas cookies too.
We had enough time to change into warmer clothes and rain gear before driving to our penguin tour. It has been raining off and on since we landed.
The penguin tour left from the Royal Albatross Center which was about a 45 minute drive from the castle. We checked in and they gave us some information, we watched a short video and then we walked down to their observation platform and waited for Little Penguins to arrive. We were so excited when we saw a group of 6 arrive and were even more excited when two groups of 30-50 arrived. We also saw a couple of New Zealand fur seals.
The platform had red lights and some low white lights so we could see the penguins easily but photographing them was another story. We loved the tour and watching the penguins.
After a 45 minute drive back to the castle we went straight to bed- so far very little jet lag- fingers crossed for the next few days.