After one last round of minigolf at the hotel, Dave and I head out for Rotorua airport to fly out to the South Island. The airport itself is much smaller than the one in Urbana-Champaign, IL, but quite a bit bigger than the one in Norfolk, Nebraska. I puzzle over the hordes of people running around dressed in green, wondering if they’re supporting some sort of local sports team, until it dawns on me that it is St. Patrick’s Day. I, happily, am coincidentally already wearing a green shirt, so I just pinch Dave in the arm and go on with my day.

It takes an absurd amount of time to get everybody situated on the plane. One couple sits down without consulting their seat number. When it occurs to them to look, they can’t find the information anywhere. Another has misread the seat number on their ticket and have sat in the wrong place. I have no idea if this is par for the course on these domestic flights or if everyone has gotten an early start on the green beer.

When we arrive in Christchurch, we check into the Rydges Hotel. We get our room key and head up to the top floor. We discover that (a) the elevator requires a room key to go to the top floor and (b) our room number is posted in front of the only set of double doors on the entire floor. Doors that are labelled “Royal Suite”. We open one of the double doors to see a dining room table. And an aquarium full of fish. We head back down to the lobby to see if they’ve made some sort of (expensive) mistake. As it turns out, our room rate wasn’t so hot, so they very kindly upgraded us to a bigger room. The biggest room, actually. It’s tragic that we are only in town for one night, but we try to make the most of it. There are snippets of conversation like
Rebecca: “I’m watching our fish reflected in our television.”
Dave: “One of our televisions.”
Rebecca: “Oh, yeah.”
and
Rebecca: “Which view do you like better? The one from our living room, the one from our dining room, or the one from our bedroom?”