We were very pleased with our long-haul Air New Zealand flight from Vancouver to Auckland, so had nothing but high hopes for today’s 3-1/2 hour flight to Sydney.
It certainly started well, with the Air New Zealand Koru Lounge in Auckland’s international terminal being a real delight. There’s also was a huge selection of breakfast foods and drinks, as well as a live cooking station run by a gregarious chef.
I enjoyed an early morning tasty small spinach omelette and a flat white: Ted had pancakes and cheese Kranskys (sausages). Both yummy. We knew we’d get fed again on our flight.
The coffee ordering system was particularly efficient. There’s a tablet at the barista station to allow each person to choose their preferred drink and customize it. when the barista has made it, the receipt included the name you entered when ordering. Of course, being New Zealand, there are marshmallows offered with the coffee.
Our departure was delayed by 90 minutes while the auxiliary engine inspection was completed, but there were updates broadcast every 15 minutes, which was a refreshing change from flight delay experiences on other airlines.
Once on board the plane we had an immediate warm welcome with hot towels and a choice of juice or champagne. The seating was in the same style of pods as on our long haul flight from Vancouver, although we didn’t use the bed feature.
The menu offerings for our morning flight were breakfast options; I almost wished we’d been scheduled on a later flight with the wonderful lunch options that included manuka honey-glazed lamb and an affogato-inspired ice cream dessert, which would have given me one more opportunity to enjoy New Zealand dairy.
Nonetheless, the croissants were warm, the fruit fresh, the granola crunchy, and the coffee delicious. Neither of us opted for the bigger breakfast options after eating in the lounge pre-flight.
We left Auckland at 10:30 a.m. and arrived in Sydney 3-1/2 hours later at noon, having gained back 2 of the 21 hours we lost on January’s flight.
After spending weeks looking for birds to photograph, we walked out the terminal door to this:
Ted commented that the pigeons in Australia sure are big – and strange-looking. Interestingly, the Australian White Ibis is commonly known in urban areas as the “bin chicken”. It’s hard to get respect here.
We arrived at our hotel, where our room was ready, but the entire hotel without wifi, and no solution expected until Monday. We were comped free drinks for the inconvenience, but given that airport hotels in Sydney are back to being Vancouver/Toronto prices, we still weren’t happy campers. Fortunately, my own personal tech guru found a deal on data: $14CAD for two days of unlimited data for Ted, with 1Gig per day shared onto my iPad so that I can blog.
The Expedia photos of our Premium Economy room, a pretty basic space with just coffee/tea-making facilities, rated 9.0/10, looked like this:
Our actual room was identical with the exception of curtain and upholstery colours (swap gold for blue). It’s a small room with simple furnishings – think the Indigo or Ibis hotel chains.
There are a couple of cheeky Aussie touches though:
There’s no real place to sit in the room, so it’s lucky that there’s a top floor lounge (currently decorated for Valentines Day) with comfy chairs overlooking the airport.
Sydney’s International Airport is technically in the Sydney suburb Mascot (about 8km/5mi) outside the city centre, much in the same way that Toronto’s Pearson Airport is actually in Malton. Mascot, with a population right around 22,000, has a bit of the feel of Malton before it was amalgamated into Mississauga: a diverse community of immigrants exchanging food and customs. Our hotel is only a 20 minute walk to Mascot Village, with plenty of restaurants and shops set into originally art deco storefronts along the old main street.
We walked into town to a small Italian restaurant called Stonevilla for our main meal of the day. The restaurant clearly caters to locals: just 30 seats, daily specials, and unpretentious plating – but good food at a reasonable price.
It’s been more than a month since I’ve had pasta (if you don’t count the refrigerated tortellini we made one night – and I don’t), so the varied pasta menu looked great. We started with bruschetta, and then I continued the Italian theme with a really nice seafood spaghetti marinara that featured button clams, baby octopus, shrimp, scallops, and a single plump green-lipped mussel. A lot of the options featured seafood, so Ted went for one of the few non-Italian items on the menu: a half kilo of chicken wings smothered in peri-peri sauce.
We spent our evening in the lounge, me naturally with a glass of wine, just watching planes take off and land as the sun set.
We’re here all day tomorrow, with absolutely nothing planned except a walk around the village on a quiet Sunday and dinner across the road at Moxy’s. Monday morning we fly to Adelaide for 6 nights.
Rose and Ted’s Excellent Adventure 