New Zealand

I am about to set off on an epic holiday, the trip of trips, I'm off to New Zealand. A whopping 12,000 miles, the other side of the world, a total of 34 hours to get there and a 13 hour time difference.

There are 4 of us going, me, Dad, my godmother Marj and her daughter Rachael. Me and Dad are going by coach from Cardiff to Heathrow and the others are flying down from Edinburgh. We've got at least 6 hours to wait in Heathrow before we board a 12 hour flight to Bangkok where we refuel and stretch our legs before getting on the same plane for an 8 hour flight to Sydney. Then we change to the final flight to Auckland, another 3 and a half hours in the air.

Something seems to go wrong with every holiday we take, we had a very early start when we went to Cyprus. My alarm didn't go off and I woke up half an hour before check-in closed. We had never moved so fast in our lives, we got there with only a couple of minutes to spare. We were whisked through security and barely had time to sit down in the departure lounge before we were boarding.

We have had a problem with this holiday already. The travel agent spelled Rachael's name wrong on the documents so they had to cancel her booking and rebook it. I was choosing our seats online when I discovered that she had been booked on a different flight, leaving just a few minutes earlier. We are still waiting for the travel agent to sort it out, apparently the flight is now full but they've managed to upgrade her, at least she is on the same fight now.

Hopefully this means that everything else will go smoothly.