The eagle has landed

Well, we've made it! 28 hours of traveling, and not a lot of sleep, but we've arrived safely in Holland. Not only that, but Floyd has arrived safely as well and has been sleeping at my feet last night. So a VERRY big thank you to the galls at FVC Thames for looking after him and to Kerry in Particular for getting him safely over here.

I'll put some more photo's up of our last days and the trip later today so watch this space.

UPDATE:

By the time we left Motueka we were nearing the end of our holiday. We decided to drive quite far down towards ChCh to be able to spend another 2 days there. The first day we managed to get to Kaikura. With the recent snowfall the Kaikura ranges looked spectacular. It never ceases to amaze to see the ocean with its tropical blue colour on one side, and snowcapped mountains just on the other side. Very nice indeed. Driving over there took us all day so we just stayed the night there.

The following day we drove towards Hanmer Springs and the plan was to stay our last 2 days there. Except it turned out that Hanmer was nothing like we expected. In all the brochures and TV commercials it is made out like it is some kind of little alpine village. When we arrived however it turned out to be just a regular village at he bottom off some hills. It was nice, but nowhere near as spectacular as we envisioned.

So off we went again, straight through to ChCh so from there on we would not need to drive any further. In ChCh we had one relaxed day where we took the Gondola. Both jeroen and Jasper LOVED it. We had a little picknick at the top and then drove on to Sunmer and spent some time at the beach. After that back to the motel unit and to bed.

The following day we sold Big Bertha. We expected major problems with Jeroen who LOVES Big Bertha and who got really upset with the idea of us selling her. When we told him that she would not fit the plain and that we would take her to another little kid who could ride in her he was satisfied with that and no more tears where shed. In fact, when we got on the plane he looked around and said, "Big Bertha does not fit the plane daddy, there are too many chairs in here".

After that, it was one last day of relaxing at the campsite, jumping on the jumping pillow and time to go to the airport at night. First 2 flights where perfect. Kids sleeping, plnae half empty so we could get seats we wanted, a bassinet for Jasper and really nice Air NZ flightcrew.

Los Angeles was hell. We had problems with the tickets which took us over an hour to resolve. then there were the security measures. Instead of just transferring from one flight to another we had to clear customs, collect all our luggage, check it in again, and then go throug "security". far out. Lots of notes stating that you will be treated with respect and dignity and friendly. Well not by the overweight, underpaid unhappy bunch of wankers that manned our checkpoint. take shoes of, check stroller, check backpack, kids screaming and crying blue murder and the one of the wankers looking at you and saying: you should try it from this side.... Yeah whatever, I feel sorry for you.... NOT.

In spite of our 3 hour transfer time we only made it to our connecting flight with 25 minutes to spare before boarding started. The last flight was knackering. Older plane, no personal entertainment system and two kids wide awake. To make things worse Jasper got some colic and screamed for 25 minutes. Again the flightcrew came to the rescue and one of the girls took Jasper to the galley, sat him on her lap and fed him some canned fruit. Hats off. I know it is there job but they went to great lengths to make us all as comfortable as possible.

So after the last 10 hours we landed in Amsterdam to find friends and family waiting. Funny thing was that it felt we had only been on vacation just a couple of weeks. Nothing has changed in these 2 years and allready NZ seems such a long time ago it's frightening! By then we were pretty knackered so after Floys was collected it was off to home for some tea and then an early night.

By now we are getting back in our rhythm. I've been to see my future colleages and with a lot of familliar faces that felt really good. For now we're going to visit friends and relax a lot before we have to start work again.

I'll try to put on some pictures of my new job soon so the thames ladies can see where there resident nerd has ended up! Hope everybody in NZ is doing well and will give you a call soon to catch up. Either that or we can have an MSN/skype date for the latest gossip. Enjoy the summer because the weather here is not exactly sunny!

Cheers,

Maarten, Esther, Jeroen and Jasper