USA 2009 – Thanksgiving, Columbia – South Carolina and Coming Home

It’s been 3 weeks since we returned home and I’ve had it in the back of my mind ever since that I should really finish off the holiday blogging with a trip summary. But with moving house, Christmas and organising a wedding it kind of slipped down the list a bit.

Well here I am on the eve of my return to work after seven weeks holiday (vacation for those American relatives reading this) and I’m trying to remember and sum up something that happened nearly a month ago!
Last time I left you we had an early morning flight out of NOLA to Columbia South Carolina via Atlanta. Once in Columbia we picked up a hire car at the airport and headed to “Aunt Catherine’s” house. She’s Pat’s auntie, but “Aunt Catherine” to everyone.

Catherine is in her early to mid 80’s and the main carer for her husband. She thinks nothing of hosting Thanksgiving for 20 at her house every year. This year the family flew/drove in from:

• Atlanta – Georgia
• Berne – Switzerland
• Valdosta – Georgia
• Raleigh – North Carolina
• Makin – Georgia
• Chatanooga – Tennessee
• Dayton – Tennessee
• Ann-Arbor – Michigan
• Bannf – Ontario, Canada
• Adelaide, South Australia

And so the holiday wound up with much feasting and drinking, including Two (yes count them two) deep fried turkeys. I shan’t describe it but let the pictures tell the story:

After much feasting and drinking it was time to come home, and whilst by the end of the holiday we were looking forward to coming home, seeing the animals and moving house we had a long trip ahead of us.

Our flight from Columbia, SC departed at 7.30 am on Monday, but Helene’s flight was at about 6.30 am which means we were up at 5am to be at the airport by 6am. Flight number one was a quick up and down to Atlanta where we had an hour before flight number 2 to Las Vegas we had a few hours in Las Vegas so we decided we’d rest up and grab some lunch. We almost stumbled at this point because we’d forgotten that: a). It’s illegal to display a clock in an airport, and b). Airport PA systems can only broadcast as far as the person standing next to the announcer.

As we were leisurely dining on airport Mexican food we missed all of our boarding calls, and by the time we headed for the gates they were just about to close the doors. It was just at this moment that Michelle who has never taken a travelator in her life and has chastised me every time I dare step on to one of these moving walkways decided that this would be the quickest way to the gate. Unfortunately we were departing form gate 2 and the travelator didn’t end until gate 10. Acting at lightening quick speed she decided she’d “jump the fence” however she jumped the wrong side and still had a 50m run back to the gate where Pat and I were stamping our feet impatiently and the airline girls were gnashing their teeth in frustration.

She made it within two shakes of a lamb’s tail (there was another slang expression relating to short penises that I wanted to use here, but for the life of me couldn’t remember) and made flight number 3 for the day to San Francisco where we had a 5 hour wait until we picked up our next flight to Auckland (NZ). Our saving grace in the SF airport was the Berman Reflection room, which thankfully because all the Americans thought would be full of terrorists praying to Mecca was completely empty and gave us a small window of solace before the long haul flight to NZ.

We arrived in Auckland at about 6am on Wednesday (no Tuesday for us) and by the time we’d cleared customs and made it to our hotel where we were staying for a one night stopover it was about 8.30am. Although we had told them that we were arriving early and requested an early check in, their idea or early was 11am, so after 24 hours flying time, 6-8 hours hanging around airports, losing a day crossing the dateline we still had 3 hours to kill before we had our rooms.

We found a nice cafe for breakfast where the waiting staff were actually genuinely friendly and said words like fuck and shit which was refreshingly familiar after the sanitised sir, and madam type service we got everywhere in the US , and where we left a tip because the service was actually worth it and it was not just the expected thing to do.

After breakfast we wandered down to the docks/port where we saw a cruise ship which had just arrived. Pat for some reason thought that he might be able to convince someone to let us have an on board tour, but as we got closer it was plainly obvious that all of the passengers were debarking and having to go through customs. Never the less Pat still though he’d have a look around, and after about 15 or twenty minutes of me trying to keep myself awake by leaning against a pole he was back with us and we slowly made our way back to the hotel.

After a sleep, shower and shave Auckland was still a blur we had a nice Thai dinner but boy was I glad to be on the plane the next day for the final leg home…

Holiday over!