Travel for the Over 30s

The huge A380 is pretty much the last word in modern aircraft and the A380 wars have been hotting up on long-haul routes.  Now Emirates is extending their A380 service to Auckland. Emirates will have A380’s on the Auckland-Sydney route 3 times a week from next week, with the aim of increasing frequency to daily A380 flights ex-Auckland as planes become available.

Auckland airport has had to do some work including widening runway’s to accomodate the massive A380.  The question being raised though is Emirates just dumping extra capacity on the Trans-Tasman route? Well Air NZ is asking it anyway and probably Qantas. For the traveler though its all good news. Even just with three flights a week thats an extra 1200 seats a week!

Emirates is also offering an affordable option to upgrade and see what all the fuss is about business and first class travel. If you use frequent flyer points to upgrade your NZ-Australia flight then they will give you a complementary return upgrade - smart move!Not sure that the first class showers are available though on the three hour flight from Auckland to Sydney

To be honest if you want to fly with a the best airline in terms of in-flight entertainment and food then ANY of Emirates planes beat the antiquated systems in place on Qantas or AirNZ - or go properly low budget and fly Pacific Blue - Australia’s Virgin Blue’s cousin.

This time last year we were home in New Zealand - and the weather was really,really unusual - it was perfect. There was no wind! It was sunny! There was NO wind! ALL day! There is always wind in Wellington - because we cop the wind tunnel effect between the North and South Island. Wellington is as close to a home that I have and I can assure you on good day its absolutely gorgeous: the compact city is built on the sides of the hills that surround the pretty harbour. The trouble for many tourists that there just aren’t that many good days in Wellington! If its miserable - check out these photos and then find a nice warm coffee shop -we do those rather well too!

I took a whole lot of photos intending to do a piece on the interesting sculptures around town. I never got around to writing the piece but the photos are generally self-explanatory so I thought it was time they got dug off the hard drive and published somewhere!