01/9/2017 - Airport, plane, airport, plane

Day of Week: Monday

Cities visited: Auckland, Dreamliner, Los Angeles (airport), Seattle

Lodging: Traditional bed and breakfast in Cambridge

Monday was our last "day" of vacation, although thanks to the international date line we experienced almost two full Mondays! For example, our flight from Auckland left at 3:30pm Auckland time which is 6:30pm Sunday on the west coast of the U.S. So all references to Monday represent local time.

We considered squeezing in one last activity before going to the airport on Monday, but ultimately decided to be prudent and let Monday be a travel and take-care-of-business day. First though we had breakfast with our AirBnB host -- muesli with fresh berries. It seems to be the breakfast of choice for AirBnB hosts! Perhaps sensing Zach's profession, during breakfast our host asked Zach for tech support help with her Mac. 

We packed up and then the drive to Auckland airport. It was surprisingly easy to return the rental car, get our passports checked and go through security. After some waiting around at the airport we boarded our eleven hour flight on the Dreamliner to LAX. We landed around 5:45am Monday morning which was weird (landing before we took off!) and also a bit of a shame since neither of us slept much on the plane, especially Zach. After landing it was a quick skip through customs (thanks Global Entry!), then we settled in for what we thought would be an eight hour layover. Our flight to Seattle was about three hours delayed however, which meant about eleven hours in LAX post-customs. While this disrupted our original plan to grocery shop Monday evening, we did a lot of random housekeeping tasks by phone and internet and also got in plenty of reading. After more reading on the flight to SeaTac and the short ride back to our apartment (thanks Greg!) we were home. Home sweet home!

With about nine hours before the Tuesday workday began we did a small emergency load of laundry and then went to bed.