We made it back in one piece, all luggage intact and in the right place at the right time, and we didn't even have much jet-lag!
Thursday was our last day in London, and we had half the day free before we needed to head for Heathrow, so we went to Buckingham Palace for the Changing of the Guard. We got there a bit late, and had a bit of trouble seeing anything very clearly, which was a shame.
The final London excitement was a trip to Harrod's! We only had time for a brief shop, but could easily have spent a couple of hours there if we'd had the time.
We allowed plenty of time to get to the airport by Tube, and we needed every minute of it. There was no hanging around at any point on the way back home, all flights were bang on time, no hiccoughs at all, nobody got sick, all very boring really! We did, however, get to watch lots of movies and TV shows on the wonderful Singapore Air personal entertainment consoles.
We arrived in a hot and humid Auckland at midday on Saturday, and of course we had no summer clothing to speak of (except for Natasha who got some in the sales in France). We forced ourselves to stay awake by having afternoon tea with Alastair (Peter's cousin), Aakanksha, Anoushka and Marcus, and then dinner with Carolyn (Peter's cousin), Matt, Oscar and Meg.
The next morning, we flew back to Wellington, where Pat and Geoff welcomed us home with a lovely lunch already prepared on our dining room table. Again, we all stayed up until bed-time, and from then on we had no problems with jet-lag. Yay!
We've had a truly wonderful holiday, with its share of ups and downs of course, but no major problems. We got to experience real long-term snow, met lots of family (some for the first time), spoke and heard a variety of languages and discovered that toilet light switches are always outside the door!