Today is flight day. As everyone always asks me "Where are you off to now?"
Well this trip sees me heading to Rarotonga, Cook Islands for one week and then Auckland and Wellington, New Zealand for another week. I feel so fortunate to have the opportunity to travel so much. In the last four years I've been to Germany, France, Cuba twice, Ireland, Disneyland, London and now this! And I'm so fortunate that Vancouver and the west coast is where I get to live.
Today started earlier than I had hoped, 4:30am wake up all because I had to go to the bathroom. I managed to fall asleep again, but woke up at 7:30am, probably from the anticipation. I stayed in bed until my alram went off at 8:45am and then all I wanted to do was stay in bed. Mornings just really aren't my thing.
It's a beautiful sunny day today, but I get to spend my day waiting at airports and sitting in airplanes! Let the adventure begin....

Mom and Dad drove Ziad and me to the airport and once we checked in, we walked around the U.S. departures area for a bit. It has been re-done with a bunch of great shops since I was last there. Next stop was the Air canada lounge where we had lunch. It pays to travel with Ziad!! :) Not only is he fun to travel with and explore things with, he has connections. We boarded our non-eventful flight to LAX. I watched "The Reader" and was glad I watched it on a plane because that would have been 92 minutes of my life I couldn't get back. It was a good movie overall, but quite slow at times and probably at least 30 minutues longer than needed to be. We landed in smoggy LAX and as we were about to leave the plane, Ziad was paged by Air Canada and told to meet a personal concierge outside the plane. Rita, the personal concierge, then took us to the Air New Zealand lounge were we get to spend the next 5 hours!! It's a really nice lounge and we're going to get escorted back to the gate when we need to leave. Don't I feel special. Now the waiting begins.....