Getting there - the Kiwi flew too...

Phew! PHEW!! The non-flying kiwi is a sensible bird...

It's now very early Tuesday morning (Netherlands time) and the timeline since very early Sunday morning (NZ time) goes something like this...

Up 3.00am. Final preparations. Feed chooks (in dark), feed cats, feed Possum (cat) up the road. Leave Governors Bay at 7.00am to pick up Claire in Opawa and out to airport. At airport, as requested, THREE hours before departure. Flight late leaving. Ten+ hours flight to Singapore on Singapore Airlines. Five hours wait in Changi airport. Twelve+ hours to Frankfurt on Lufthansa. Two hour wait at Frankfurt after lengthy, snaking queue through immigration. One hour flight to Amsterdam, also Lufthansa. Find train station below airport. Try and pay for train ticket to Den Haag - machine won't accept my carefully pre-loaded with Euros ANZ Travecard. Top of a LONG queue of busy people with functioning cards. Lovely, patient Dutch lady who coped cheerfully with my post-flight miasma and incipient distress. Mastercard to the temporary rescue. Train to Den Haag Central, them tram from the centre to Rijswijk where Lauren and Merel met me at the tram stop and we walked a short distance  Bilderdijklaan 35. My 'travel light' policy pays dividends.

Random flight observations: the food on Singapore Airlines (for airline food) was delicious; the food on Lufthansa was crap. ChCh-Singapore leg sat next to an Indian couple, from New Delhi, who had just spent three months with their son and daughter-in-law and 2 1/2 month old grandson in Christchurch. The son teaches at the University of Canterbury. Small world. On the Frankfurt-Amsterdam leg sat next to a little (maybe Turkish?) girl of about six or seven, who was separated from her father up ahead. Such a lovely, self-contained, serious little lass who gently but firmly demonstrated that she didn't need any help to do the airplane stuff and who rewarded me with a beautiful smile as we disembarked. This is one of the reasons I love to travel - to experience the rich variety of the world, be reminded of how diverse and yet connected we are.

And back to Den Haag. Such a warm welcome from Lauren and Merel who leave this morning for Germany, Switzerland and Italy. Met Merel's parents and several friends who dropped in, met much loved cats Nina and Lasse, had a short walk to the local shops, tried to deal with my email - grrrrrr, server won't recognise my webmail account, meaning I can receive but can't send email messages. Working on that. All this in a haze of serious flight fatigue...  But I am here. Intact.

To those of you who might be reading this and who have sent emails, I'm sorry I can't reply right now. I have read your messages :-)  I may be able to find a location where I can access webmail. And/or I am working on setting up a Gmail account...

Photos haven't been a priority so far, but a couple to finish with...

'Upright' bikes outside local shops. I was taken by the pink plastic carry-box!

Lasse commandeers my bed-in-the-making