Departure day is always a bit weird for me, but I think this one went as well as could be hoped for. It was an evening flight, and I ‘booked’ a taxi for 4, so I had time to kill. ( The booking process was “what time? ok, I’ll see you then” )
Got breakfast in the beach bar, checked out & stored my bags ( didn’t even have to carry them downstairs, because the concierge & his trolley were outside the door picking up someone else’s bags when I left the room ), and just chilled out.
Yes, I did end up reading & having a drink or two by the beach. Pretty happy with that decision.
The car turned up roughly when he said he would, but I wasn’t too worried. Hadn’t paid him in advance, and if he was a no-show there were plenty of other taxis out there. But I figured that things probably ran on Fiji time and it would work out if I made sure there was a bit of wiggle room.
Not too much I can say about the flight; it was a night flight over the ocean, so not a lot to see, and annoyingly I fell asleep somewhere around Whangarei, and woke up as we were landing, so I missed the interesting bits of city lights.
I’d booked an airport hotel because I knew it would be very late by the time I got out of the terminal; Turned out to be even later to get to sleep because the hotel had upgraded me to their sister hotel next door. They say upgraded, but I suspect the correct word is overbooked. In any case what could have been a very nice thing under other circumstances was actually a thing that made the process of getting some sleep take even longer. Not sure what would have happened if I said that I didn’t want to be upgraded.
Hotel internal hallways were a little weird with these long curves in them, like something from a video game where they’re trying to cut down on the amount of stuff they have to render.
