Day 12: News from elsewhere, sweet release and the hotel

It was great to wake up and learn that Biden had been elected president. We'd been paying more attention to the US election than normal, both because it was a particularly interesting election but also because we'd had a bit of time on our hands.

It has also been great seeing how well our home town of Melbourne is going with the virus and we listened to the update from the premier Dan Andrews about the further easing of restrictions. It seems that when we get home it will be a very changed city from the one we left a couple of weeks ago.

Although I'd received a negative Covid test result yesterday, it was only today that we were officially released from isolation and allowed to leave the room as there had been the need to wait 48 hours since the last symptoms had been observed. This was brilliant and so we all went out for a walk, plus later in the day sat in the central park area and took in the sunshine.


The Hotel

The Holiday Inn Auckland Airport in Mangere where we're staying is a nice enough place to be staying in isolation. I've posted photos of the beautiful central garden area which has been a real plus. The other benefits have been having a sliding door from our room that opens onto a small garden area, along with the monitored walks we can take around the hotel perimeter.

It is still an 'airport hotel' and not somewhere you'd necessarily come for a holiday, though the rooms that look onto the central garden and pool area would be OK to stay in. It has been a bit torturous to look at the pool for our whole time here and not be allowed in.

Even though it is an isolation facility, the staff have still maintained a customer focused attitude by trying to make our stays pleasant. They are very polite and always try and meet any requests we have within the limits of what they're able and allowed to do.

For Halloween the staff had decorated various parts of the hotel, including the reception and pool area:



Dotted around different parts of the hotel are various Maori carvings and artefacts which are great to see as this gives us a connection to NZ ...



Another nice feature includes the herb garden in the central area ...


We also like the banana like slip signs put on the deck after rain ..


The hotel looks like it was built in the 1970s or 80s and in parts is definitely in need of some maintenance. The gutters in particular are in bad shape, with leaks visible, a lot of bubbled paintwork and some areas of weed growth ...


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