"Travel makes one modest. You see what a tiny place you occupy in the world."  
  Scott Cameron

We had expected that the flight to Seoul would be heavily subscribed as people headed home for Xmas . But the flight was only about half full. Either they had caught an earlier flight or were leaving the return home till closer to Xmas.

12 hours after take-off we landed in Seoul. We left Rome with the temperatures in single digits and arrived on Seoul in double digits. The only problem was that while it was in the mid-teens, it was in the negative zone, -14^oC. A very chilly reception, exacerbated by having to wait on an outside stand for our hotel shuttle bus to arrive. Fortunately, it took far less time to arrive than our Frankfurt shuttle bus and soon after being picked up, we were checking in to a very warm Seoul hotel. It was located near the airport and catered for the transit traffic. The outside temperatures and ground snow, together with the late meal on the aircraft meant that neither of us was very hungry or interested in venturing out so we both opted for an early night in a static bed [which happened to be very comfortable]. The only drawback was that the hotel had under-floor heating which made the room extremely warm [actually, too much so] so we ended up turning down the air conditioning and sleeping with our window open even though the temperature was dropping even further outside. Drastic move but it would have been quite unbearable had we not been able to open the window.

Next morning, we headed back to the airport on an early shuttle and because we had been checked in all the way to Auckland from Rome, were able to go straight to the lounge even though we were not flying again for another six hours. An indication of just how ready we were to get home was the fact that neither of us bothered to check out the duty free shops.

After a long wait, we finally boarded our flight for Auckland. This time, however, the flight was full so cabin staff were kept busy. The following morning our final flight of the trip would return us to Wellington.