We absolutely love to travel around the world – the farther away, the better. But we dread the long distance flying that comes with it. My husband at least has the luxury to being able to sleep for a while. For me that’s typically even harder. This was also one of the reasons we had been putting off going to Australia and New Zealand. When we finally couldn’t take it anymore and started planning our trip, we worked out the below schedule which actually made the journey pretty comfortable. So wanted to share that with you.
Flight schedule
This was the schedule to get from Amsterdam to Christchurch, New Zealand:
- Flight from Amsterdam to Singapore: 12u30
- Overlay in Singapore: 1u45
- Flight from Singapore to Perth: 5u15
- Overlay in Perth: 10u30
- Flight from Perth to Christchurch: 6u
As we live in Belgium, this means we actually first had to get to Amsterdam, which is about a 2 hour car drive from Antwerp region. We did that the night before.
Visiting Perth
So Perth would then be our first encounter with the Australian continent. We picked up our luggage and stored it at some lockers at the airport. Pretty easy. We only took our hand luggage with us, including some clean clothes, a toiletry kit to freshen up and a towel. There’s showers at the airport, which we very much enjoyed paying a visit before continuing our travels.
We did a tour covering the city and through King’s Park. King’s Park actually offers great views overlooking the city. I’ve attached the tour we did (about 4 hours, without stops). We took it rather easy – it was hot!
You can find maps of the city and what you’d like to visit online.
Getting to the start of our tour, we took the bus 380 at the airport, which went to Elisabeth Quay Bus Station. It’s about 30 minutes. Tickets can be bought at the ticket machines at the bus station. You can find the schedule here.
Return trip
After one of the most amazing vacations of all, of course we needed to get back home. The return trip’s of course even worse. Luckily, we had gone from the Northern Island of New Zealand to Kangaroo Island, Australia, it was already less horrifying. Still, 22 hours of flight (before the final car drive of 2 hours), still is enough.
So, the idea was to do a sightseeing tour in Singapore, as a lot of people do. You can actually take a free one (we wanted to do the City Sights tour) that you can enlist to when arriving at the airport. You should at least have 6 hours overlay. Sounded great! Only, when we landed, the list appeared to be full already, so we were stuck at the airport for almost 9 hours.
But, as you might have heard as well, Singapore airport is one of the better airports out there. It even has a pool. So, after cleaning up a bit and having something to eat, that’s where we went. It costs 17 SGD per person, which is about 13 EUR. Watching the planes take off while relaxing in the pool has a certain something…
Other Countries we visited
Have a look at the other countries we ‘achievied’ to visit, and other Achievies…
