welcomed back

reuben was waiting at the auckland airport with lillies and a rose!

after a very long journey, i was so ready to get away from annoying people who have no respect for what limited personal space you have on a plane! i hope this american airlines airpoints program i joined is going to accumulate points pretty fast so i can upgrade before my next long haul flight.

after picking me up at around 6am, reuben and i headed to our hotel for a little nap before heading back down toward taupo. we had lunch right near the sky tower after stopping at lush to do a little smelling (we got a vanilla fountain bath bomb).

we rolled into rotorua a bit after 5 and stopped by kiwi encounter for hugs from claire and emma. after a quick change, we headed out for dinner with emma at abracadabra. i was still pretty full from lunch, but the fried chickpeas and wine (i think it was a peregrine saddleback pinot noir) were delish! such a great little place.

after dinner we headed out for our last stop of the day: taupo. reuben's parents have a little caravan by the lake where we were planing on enjoying some wine, cheese, snacks and time alone. however, after getting settled in and turning on the jug to make some tea, everything went black - power out! we thought it would be easily solved, but after much stress and no lights, we had little choice but to keep going on to palmy :( it was not a fun drive after that... i couldn't keep my eyes open if i tried so i couldn't even keep reuben much company for the extra 2 1/2 hours. needless to say, we arrived late and exhausted.

luckily we had sunday to recover..