The Journey Home! London, Zurich, Hong Kong, Auckland: 31 August

The day has finally come to begin our journey home!

Today, Monday 31 August, after packing up our final bits and pieces and loaded everything into our car, we left Paul and Lucy's amazing hospitality, and drove to the Premier Inn Heathrow Terminal 5.

Here we unloaded the car and checked in to our room. We had a great view over one of the runways at the airport which the kids loved. Cale was busy tracking them online and finding our where they were all going - plane spotter!!

While we were checking in, Brad was busy meeting someone from London Left Hand Drive who would offer us only a quarter of what we paid for our car, a Hyundai Santa Fe, back in December. Sadly we had no option but to accept his cash offer and complete the sale.

After removing the number plates from the car, (these have to be return to Austria to enable the insurance to be cancelled), we waved goodbye.

Next we got the bus to terminal 5 and purchased some stamps from WH Smith. Once done, we bused back to the hotel where we had a takeaway meal (only option) from the onsite restaurant.

Back in our room we packaged up the plates and gave to reception to post for us, and booked a taxi for the morning to take us to terminal 2.

The plates we sent to Paul and Lucy for them to add to the huge package that needs to go back to Vienna with all the camping/caravan things we borrowed from Carina.

Once done, we checked in online for our flights and headed to bed pretty exhausted!

The following morning (1 Sept) we met our taxi at 5:45am downstairs and arrived at terminal 2 shortly after. Once our bags were tagged and dropped we found something to eat for breakfast. Most shops were open which made it relatively easy. We found what we needed, including a couple of books and neck pillows, from WH Smith.

Once our gate was announced we headed through security which was pretty smooth, and on to the gate to board our first flight to Zurich. The flight departed on time and was shorter than expected at an hour 15 minutes, however social distancing was clearly not high on the agenda here. Both Brad and I had someone sitting right next to us, and the rows in front, behind and across the aisles were occupied.

Once in Zurich we went straight to our gate as we only had 1.5 hours here. The boys did a little technology while we went to the shop and bought some expensive (€6 each) toothbrushes (I'd forgotten to leave ours out of the suitcase) and spent our remaining (€20) Euro coins at a snack vending machine, as they would only accept contactless payments in stores (pretty normal these days in the UK and Europe).

Soon after it was time for passport control and boarding. This Swiss Air flight was very socially distanced!! Hardly anyone on board - we estimate there would have been about 30 passengers!! We were able to easily walk around and had whole rows to ourselves to lie down in!! Quite incredible - we've never experienced anything quite like it! It was however a long flight at nearly 12 hours!! The staff were amazing and looked after us well. Offering snacks regularly and giving the kids a big bag full of Swiss chocolates, kids headphones, colouring in stuff, stickers and other bits and pieces. They also gave us a big box of Lindt chocolates!!

We arrived into Hong Kong at 7am and headed to the transit area. We tried to sleep here, however it wasn't easy due to the noise and the seat configuration. Cale had a wee snooze and Nico eventually got to sleep sitting up and slept for about an hour.

After waking Nico so we could head through security to our gate, he then lay down on the seats there and slept for another three or so hours! I also had to wake him here to get sorted before boarding.

Hong Kong airport was as we had expected, very quiet and eerie. Practically all the shops were closed except two kind of takeaway cafes and a couple of other small shops.

After our 10 hour way in transit, we finally boarded our Air NZ flight at 4:50pm ready for a 5:30pm departure. The flight would have been about half full, so social distancing was possible again here which was good.

This night flight was good with good service from the staff. After just over 10 hours we landed in Auckland at 8am.

We had to stay seated on the plane until the 'all clear' was given by health officials, then we were able to disembark. We were shown the way by customs staff and queued to have our temperature checks. Again, very eerie, more so than other airports on this journey home. No shops open at all, in fact the duty free stores on arrival were all boarded up.

Once we had our temperatures checked and had answered some questions, we were informed of what would happen next, then moved on to meet with a nurse. She discussed with us any medical conditions we have and asked us if we had enough of our prescribed medication to last us for the two weeks.

Next we went through passport control and had all our bags checked by the Customs sniffer dog. After the all clear we could collect our luggage and head out to see the next official.

Here we showed our passports and were allocated a Managed Isolation Hotel - in central Auckland, thankfully! Our luggage was loaded on to the coach once it arrived, and we headed off.