The flight
Let's be fair: it is a looooong trip from Europe to New Zealand. On our way in we flew from Amsterdam to Singapore (12 hours) and from Singapore to Auckland (10 hours). On the way back we took a flight from Queenstown to Christchurch, stayed overnight in Christchurch and flew to Singapore the next morning. After a six hours stopover in Singapore, we flew back to Amsterdam.Our oldest son was happy the whole flight. He watched movies and played games. The youngest was a little bit harder to entertain. He slept for some hours, watched cartoons, and tried to play games but was mainly frustrated by the distance to the touchscreen/console. Also, he didn't want to buckle up when the seat belt sign was on, which posed a challenge for us. Another challenge was the food: having a tray full of food yourself to manage, and preventing your children from accidentally dropping stuff from their plate at the same time is quite a hassle. We took shifts here: one of us ate while the children had their food and the other one ate when they finished.
We brought small gifts for them to unpack (hotwheel cars, small containers of playdoh, and the like) and that kept them happy for some time.
The jetlag
The time difference is 10 hours. Yes, this means a huge jetlag. We arrived in Auckland late in the evening and were all so tired that we slept the whole night and woke up around 11.30 AM. The nights after that we were awake for a few hours every night and slept in in the mornings. It took us four or five nights to sleep through the night again, but for a whole week we had difficulties getting up in the morning. At some point, we thought: "why did we book Hobbiton for 10AM?!" -- Well, because at home our boys wake early so leaving at 8.30 would not be difficult at all, but we underestimated the effect of the jetlag. (Honestly, we were quite happy after all, because the booked tours forced us to enter the new day-and-night schedule).We considered booking a hotel room for a few hours on Singapore Airport for the 6 hours layover. But the airport hotel was fully booked and we ended up resting at arm chairs. Luckily, the boys were so tired (and jetlagged -- they had been awake for 16 hours straight) that they slept in the chairs. So in the end we had a few nice and calm hours that night.
We arrived in Amsterdam early Sunday morning. We managed to stay awake all day (including the boys) and went to bed at our normal time in the evening. Within a day the jetlag was resolved.
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