All Aboard but Overweight...🚂

After breakfast, we took our time checking out and loading up the car for the last time ........ until tomorrow morning. We are in Greymouth, hire car 🚗 returned, bags 🎒 checked in; without a minor disruption when we had to lose 1kg out of one of the bags to meet the 23kg limit. Australia 🇦🇺 🪃 is going to be fun with only 20 kg each on the Sidney to Melbourne train 🚆.
After having got a coffee following the train check-in, we had a walk around the town of Greymouth, and just a few minutes later, we were back where we started in the cafe and had another drink. Safe to say, the only thing here in Greymouth is the Tranzalpine train 🚆 out of here.
We had a quite enjoyable 5 hour rail trip through the mountains rising from sea level up to around 920 metres. The journey listed as the 6th best in the world 🌎 is probably far better on a sunny day and not on a day that is grey with lots of low overcast clouds passes through 19 tunnels and over 4 viaducts. As the journey started to flatten out and we hit the plains of Canterbury as we came to the end of our pleasant 224 kilometre journey. As a journey it is so well organised, as we pulled into Christchurch there was an announcement that all checked in bags could be collected from the front of the train as it came down a conveyor belt after being unloaded from the baggage car. We found a number of Christchurch Touring Company representatives who were picking up numerous passengers. After collecting our luggage 🧳 we headed over to them and then into their minibus and headed to various city hotels. When we arrived at our hotel at the Distinction Hotel we then discovered our new 19 day old suitcase was damaged!!Read more