After parking our truck in Joe’s Airport Parking next to the Homewood Suites by Hilton hotel, we checked in to the hotel for the night.

We did that to avoid any time crunch between dropping off our coach for storage, and checking in for the flight. Though as it turned out, we didn’t really need to do that. But better safe that sorry; if we had any significant delay with the storage, or horrible LA traffic, we could have been (more) stressed.

The hotel room was fine; mainly paying for the location, near the airport:

The hotel (and car park) offered a free shuttle to the airport:

Once there, we loaded our big pile of luggage onto a cart:

We arrived at the airport at around 11:00 (as we had to check out of the hotel), but it turned out that the Air New Zealand check-in counter didn’t open until 15:05, so we had to wait with all our luggage for four hours:

In retrospect it might have been more comfortable to wait at least part of that time at the hotel (with them storing our luggage for us), but oh well.

Once we finally got checked in and through security (which was a breeze), we had another three hours to wait till boarding. Jenn killed some time by getting a back massage:

Our plane arrived at the gate at 17:18:

Finally boarding the plane at 18:34:

Passing by the fancy Business Class seats:

The view from our seats; we sprung for Premium Economy, which is roughly equivalent to Business Class on a domestic airline:

Seat selfie:

Farewell LA:

Flight info:

Dinner menu:

Drinks menu:

Jenn’s dinner:

My dinner, the same thing (I wanted another option, but all they had left was the fish):

Breakfast menu:

Jenn’s breakfast:

My breakfast:

Flight info:

Landed about 12 hours after taking off at 04:45 NZ time, and easy customs and immigration (since I’m a citizen and Jenn’s a permanent resident), and our luggage was waiting for us in the baggage claim (priority unloading for Premium Economy) at 05:05:

We were out of the arrivals area so quickly, we were out before my brother Neville and his wife Karan had arrived, but my other brother Gavin was there to meet us. We met up with N & K shortly afterwards, and loaded up our bags, then headed back to their place, where we were to stay for a couple of nights.

It was very early, and of course we didn’t sleep super great on the flight, so we spent a couple of hours having a nap. But then we went out with them to explore a bit; stay tuned for tomorrow’s post on our first day in New Zealand.