Off To London...At Last

After five months of counting down, we were finally off to London.

December 15th 2014 had finally arrived

It was a beautiful sunny day when we left...heading to a northern winter!

At Wellington airport Joel and Luka got to kiss Gollum good-bye

D-Day had dawned. Bright-eyed and bushy tailed. Ready to see the world

Not quite so bright-eyed in Sydney. It was the middle of the night - New Zealand time. All up we had a 38 hour journey, including stop overs in Sydney and Hong Kong

We had been given dire predictions from various people about what it would be like travelling all that way with kids. There were no problems at all.
They either slept - Maria and Grace could sleep sideways on their seats - or watched the in-flight entertainment. We don't have a TV at home, so they thought they were in Heaven when we said they could watch as many movies as they wanted.
Joel quickly figured out it was better to sleep in the stop-over airports, that way he was awake to watch more movies on the plane

In Hong Kong airport a large open area and a balloon kept us entertained...not to mention rolly-pollies!

We were looking forward to seeing double-decker buses

From the outside-the-plane camera we got our first glimpse of the Thames

Touchdown! We finally made it to the Motherland!

We had been a little worried about border control - they always seem to get the most officious and least humoured people in the role of border control officers. We got a lovely woman who was all smiles with the kids. Another came over and was joking with us and the children. We were in the clear and ready for London

We were heading across London on the tubes, with all our bags, in rush hour! Fortunately we had Naomi's brother, Matthew, to act as a guide and pack carrier.

We were here. At last!