NZ: Wellington

I had a brain fart and thought my bus was at 1pm, and as I was walking down to the bus stop I double checked my ticket and saw it was actually at 12.45pm, cue a weird run/hobble with a 14kg rucksack on my back an a 5kg one on my front to catch the bus on time. I made it with 2 minutes to spare but looked like a sweaty gross mess for the journey.

I got the Intercity bus down to Welly, which is I guess the National Express to our Megabus, and the driver gives some wonderful commentary on the bus which is a nice touch.  I learnt lots of interesting facts, such as Singapore can fit inside Lake Taupo with room to spare. (OK when I say learnt....that's the only one I learnt, the rest I stopped listening to, I was reading a really good book called House Rules by Jodi Picoult which I then offloaded to an old lady on the bus as it was HUGE and I didn't want to carry it the rest of the way)   The bus stopped for a 30 minute break at a service station, which was brilliant - instead of a huge non descript Welcome Break as I am used to, it was a quaint little cafe which made food on site, had a maze, guinea pigs, ducks and some paiper mache tour guides.

We arrived in Welly with beautiful weather and calm seas, and I immediately fell in love with it.  It reminded me of Bristol (though only probably because it's got a harbour!) but it also had little quirky bits, like a pedestrian road bridge that was decorated with driftwood and random art statues around.

also I found an amazing supermarket called New World which sells premade proper meals! this is roast lamb shank and potatoes for $14

After a trudge through town to get to my hostel, I nearly cried when I saw I had to walk up a steep hill, and then some stairs to get to the front door.  Trust me to choose the only hostel up a bloody hill.....trust me to also choose the worst hostel of a bad bunch, in my dorm room there was snot stuck to the walls, the bedding stank and if I even blinked the bed would creak. But it's all character building right!?

The following day was wet and windy and pretty bloody miserable and my hair did weird things.  I have now learnt to tie it up in a bun at the slightest sign of any wind, as otherwise it gets so tangled it almost needs to be cut off to fix it again. Owch.  I spent the majority of the day in the Te Papa museum which is pretty cool and absolutely massive, I easily spent about 4 hours in there.  They have some pretty weird stuff - I sat through a 17 minute movie, described by the museum as 'a startling piece of theatre', described by me as 'weird and I didn't really understand it' which was set in a curiosity shop, and when certain things in the film played then things in the curiousity shop would light up and whizz around.

They also have the body of a giant squid, which is pretty giant to be fair. Lots of stuff on kiwi birds and earthquakes and volcanoes - you can watch a 3 minute movie in a fake house that shakes to give you the experience of being in an earthquake.    There's a bit on refugees, Maoris, and strangely a piece on contraception!!  Did you know when a kiwi female gives birth its pelvis breaks and the male kiwi has to do all the daddy work whilst the female recovers (no wonder they nearly went extinct).  And there's a frog that goes straight from spawn to baby frog with no tadpole stage.

There's also the Gallopoli exhibtion which everyone was queueing for, I couldn't really see what the fuss was about however inside there are 6 HUGE wax figures of the main characters in the battle and they are amazing, the models were so realistic and made me feel a bit like I was a borrower.  They had nose hairs and pores and everything.

That evening I went to a Led Zepplin tribute band gig in the Botanical Gardens which was fun, someone had posted about it in a facebook group so I went along with him.  We had dinner first and it was a bit of a treat as it was in a restaurant and I had the most delicious halloumi salad on curried lentils, makes such a nice change from my staple of tuna pasta!!!  The gig was really fun and it was nice to have some company - as the sky darkened, the gardens are lit up and it was all rather lovely!

The following day the weather started off lovely so I walked up Mount Victoria for some cool views, I got a little bit excited at the top when I realised I could watch planes take off and land from the airport!!! I am such a loser....I also had a nice phone call with my mumma!! I do love her lots.

the storm rolling in!

I walked home via the parliamentary buildings which aren't overly impressive (we are a bit spoilt with Big Ben and the houses of parliament) and the botanic gardens, which weren't as pretty on a dull grey day.  I caught up with Paul who was in my hostel and I had befriended ay breakfast (he reminds me so much of Sellen) and we joined another guy called Govil on a craft beer tour of Welly.  I was sensible and only had halves and every other pub, the others went for it a bit!! We had to finish before our target of 10 as the pubs all closed at 11pm on a Wed, we should have started earlier!!

we ended in maccyds but don't worry i didn't get one of these deals, but have you seen how cheap they are!!!

The following day I got the ferry to Picton!  I actually got an Uber as I couldn't face carrying my bag any further than down the hostel stairs to the street...which is what made me make the decision I have made in my next post!!! (I should be an author. So good at suspense.)