Day 1
Left Auckland on time in a plane that had plenty of empty
seats, so as soon as the seatbelt sign was turned off, there was a mad scramble
by everyone in the back part of the cabin to grab some of the spare seats. We had
paid (with gritted teeth) to choose seats with just two together down the very
back, so I was able to stay in our allotted seats and Joe grabbed one across
the aisle, which meant we were lucky enough to end up with two seats each –
room to spread out a bit. So we managed
to get some rest on the flight once the turbulence had stopped – after about 4
hours from Auckland. It was really rocking
for a while, drink spillingly rough at times.
Being right at the back meant the favourite choice for the meal (BBQ
beef) was already taken by the time the cart got to us, so it was chicken curry,
rice and peas – try not dropping those in the aforementioned turbulence- pasta
salad, roll finished off with Kapiti icecream – yum. The rest of the flight was quiet and
uneventful, just how we like them. No
crying babies or screaming children.
Always a plus !! Our arrival into
Houston was a few minutes early but then it took about an hour to wind our way
through the immigration hall, then we collected our bags and went through customs. Because we were connecting to an internal
flight, we were ushered through to the TSA area and had to do the bag scan,
take off shoes etc for the internal flight.
There was a guy at the x-ray machine next to ours refusing a pat-down,
so a few reinforcements were called in and it was explained quite clearly that
he could agree to a pat down or be ejected from the airport and miss his flight,
the choice was his. He agreed to the
pat-down.
We had debated whether to rent a car to explore Houston as
our flight to Miami wasn’t until 7.30pm.
However by the time we were herded through TSA, it was about 2.30 and
not really worth our while to leave the airport. So we sat and people watched and took turns
at watching out stuff while the other went for a walk to stay awake. Our flight to Miami was on time and also
uneventful, and we were seated in premium economy – one of the perks of booking
thru Air NZ as they tend to no allocate seats here as a rule and it can be a
scramble to be seated together.
Arrived in Miami slightly early, no bags. Waited until the carousel had emptied and then
approached the guy who was picking up the uncollected bags. He pointed us to the baggage office and at
that point we spotted ur bags through the window, they must have been sent on
an earlier flight. So we collected them
and caught a taxi to our hotel in South Beach, a very fast and scary 15 minute
drive from the airport. I had booked an
Ocean View room, but we did not have an ocean view, in fact it was a close-up view
of the building next door, with not even a snippet of the ocean to be
seen. In fact once I thought about it, I
realised the ocean was actually in the other direction completely, which I
would have realised if I’d had my wits about me when we were being directed to
the room. Given I had booked it 5 months
ago, I thought it was fair enough that we actually GET an ocean view room, so
Joe went and spoke to the guy who checked us in. The room was occupied but they agreed to move
us tomorrow and refund the difference for the room we ended up in. He spun some b-s about how the room we were
in was allocated to us when we booked and it must have done that by mistake. Sure. So
we showered and hit the hay, in a king size bed so large that I was not
bothered by snoring, and I slept well until 8am Miami time.
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