NZ Trip - Day 16 - Sydney

Today is about travelling back home after a thoroughly enjoyable trip. We came early to the airport, with me having misjudged the time it would take for the family to get ready based on other days of this tour and make the 100m trip from the hotel to the airport! Looks like everyone was more than ready to go home.

We had a good 4 hour stopover over in Sydney, so it was good to hang around the airport and get a feel of things. The CHCH flight landed 10 mins early and we were greeted by the captain on arrival saying that the ground staff were not ready yet! After the formalities were done, we decided to have some F&B and relax while my wife wanted to do explore the airport and do window shopping (it helped that I had only one card with AUD in it!).

Maybe because it was Christmas, but the Sydney airport was overflowing with passengers, way more than during our onward trip. There was no space available in the rather spacious F&B area, so we had to make do on some available chairs with a take away. My children gave into the lure of home a bit too early and ordered a large bowl of Hokkien Mee, only to find that it was cold, tasted like cardboard and unedible as per my son. There were enough red flags that the stall was manned by Indian folks in Sydney airport, but sometimes you have got to waste money during travel to learn some valuable lessons like sticking to local restaurants and local cuisines. I did compensate my children with a taste of McD pancakes, which seems to have the same taste everywhere and is always a life saver as a reliable backup option in such situations! But NZ takes a cake in that too, with their salad burgers their best burger for vegetarians outside of India.

Maybe it was Christmas and people were busy celebrating at home, but every second or third person that we looked at was Indian or Chinese again! If we had hoped to get a bit of Aussie flavour during our stopover, "din get it mite" 😞

Anyway, we couldnt help but reminiscence the past fortnight, filled with an awesome roadtrip through wondorous terrain filled with a gamut of colours, scents anf flavours to completely overwhelm our senses. NZ has just stunned us beyond belief. Even as I finish this memoir a few days' later, all I have gotten in my dreams so far are beautiful sceneries from our sojourn into the southern wonderland that I long to visit again!