Monday November 16 - Back to New Zealand

90 Mile Beach

A perfect view of 90 Mile Beach on the way on. We arrived at Auckland airport at 2pm, with our connection to Nelson being at 4:15. No issues with immigration, but for once there was quite a queue at Customs and Agriculture. We had lost track of some pistachio nuts and a lump of fig meat – we couldn’t find them in our cabin bags, and couldn’t remember if we had tossed them or left them in Madrid, so confessed to this at Agriculture, but it wasn’t an issue to them, and as it turned out we must have left them in Madrid. Staff in NZ are enormously more efficient than anywhere we have been on this trip. They seem to be able to get twice as much done in a given time, without stuffing about.

It was nice to be back on the NZ side of the border again. We didn’t have long to wait before our Nelson flight. Our equal shortest flight of the trip, and the bright green of New Zealand and the clarity of the air were immediately noticeable. As always it was lovely landing on little grassy Nelson Airport.

Our highlight of the trip? We don’t know. We have travelled so long that it is hard to say what was the No.1  thing. The top experience was certainly the Russian choral group in Carcassonne Cathedral – it was amazing. Best building? A toss-up between the Alhambra in Granada, and the cathedral/mosque in Cordoba. Best City? The lovely wide streets and lovely buildings of Barcelona. Best exchange town – Viterbo for its Italian-ness. Nicest people? Probably the Italians, but the French and Spaniards were great too. Best food? France, for the lovely bread and the cheeses. The again, Spanish tapas and olives were delicious, and the Italian gelato. Scariest roads? Northern Italy without a doubt.

If we were to do a similar trip again, I’m not sure what we would change. Not a lot I suspect. The long stays, with many daytrips out, were excellent. The day on, day off system worked well too. We’d perhaps do a bit more research about where we took our exchanges – we enjoyed the more non-touristy villages more than those with many Pommie imports.

So all in all a superb trip – one of our best.