Today was our last morning on the MS Noordam. We got up at our usual time, but we'd already heard announcements for those who had early departures. We had planned to walk around Auckland for a second day, but we needed to get off the ship at 9:15 AM. Even though there was absolutely no rush as we had a late night departure, we found that the idea of sitting in an airport wasn't so bad. The weather was nice in the city, but we'd have to pay to store the bags and then we really felt as if we no longer had a home in the city.
We got to the airport by taking the SkyBus service on our own, from very near Wharf 10 downtown. We spent a lot of the day there, right through sundown. Not a very good selection of food, I must say.
At about 11:10 PM on November 6th, our wheels left the tarmac. We left a little later than scheduled as the wind was in our favour and the pilot didn't want to get us into busy LAX too early. Air New Zeland crammed us into economy on a brand-new 777. Our scheduled flight of 12 hours, worked out to be only around 11. Yah, then LAX.
Los Angeles is still a zoo for transiting passengers. We queued, scanned our passports, queued again, talked to the Homeland Security agent, rolled to the luggage carousels, picked up our bags, queued some more to recheck our bags, went outside, waited for the free airport terminal shuttle bus, got our at terminal 6, waited for an elevator, queued some more for security, had a patdown, and rolled to the gate at the very end of the terminal. The wonderful process took about an hour and a half.
We had more time to wait as the Air Canada flight didn't load until 5:50. We got off the plane at YVR at around 9:10. By the time we got out of the airport it was after 10:00 and damned cold outside. We took the SkyTrain all the way to downtown and then the other line to New Westminster.
Was it 10:45 PM already? It is still November 6th, so we got back before we left.