Since we were leaving Australia we had all the hoops to jump through of going from one country to another.. Our carry on bags had to be opened. Tom's toothpaste and shave cream was taken out and discarded and I had a tube of Fluoride dental gel that was just about depleted that they took out because the weight on the tube stated above the limit. This was the 8th time we had gone through these security checks carrying these items in our bags and the first time it was a problem. Go figure. We flew Emirates airlines under the umbrella of Qantas. Like the plane from Dallas to Sydney, this plane was the very big A380-800 plane with 2 levels. We were almost an hour late in leaving but we did have a nice hot lunch of beef, mashed potatoes,peas and carrots, a salad with chick peas and chicken and raspberry cheesecake. There was 5 of us from the Australian tour that was traveling together. After landing in Auckland and going through customs and immigration we found our shuttle that transported us to the Langham hotel. There is a 2 hour time difference between Sydney and Aukland so it was not 4:20pm but 6:20 pm when we arrived at the hotel. A meeting was already underway with the tour director, Katie Hunter, so we quickly made our way to the meeting. Dinner this evening was here in the hotel and was a grand meal in buffet style with different seafood, steaks cooked to order, nice salad bar and beautiful desserts. After eating we came back to our room as we were feeling really tired.
