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We've been in Wellington a couple of days now and OH MY GOD, it doesn't stop raining or howling a gale here! I know they call it Windy Wellington but seriously we never imagined it would be like this. If it was raining and blowing a gale like it is here back in the UK, you'd have severe weather warnings out, but here it just seems to be the norm.
Anyway, Wellington. Apart from the weather it seems like a really nice place and is the capital city of New Zealand. Unlike our capital city back home, Wellington is quite small with the main city centre being only a couple of km across so you can pretty much walk anywhere easily. Its also spotlessly tidy and is regarded as being the safest city in New Zealand, and with New Zealand being known as the safest country in the world, it seems like a really nice place. That is when your not dripping wet from only stepping outside :)
The first day we were here we went to Te Papa which is the National Museum of New Zealand. Again it nice to have everything free and overall the museum was really good, although had a lot of the same things as in the Auckland Museum, but was still worth a look. Oh yeah, the Te Papa cafe had gluten free cake and crepes! When we had finished at Te Papa the rain started, and as of yet a day and a half later it ain't stopped!!! Anyway, the rest of the day we plodded round the city trying not to drown in the monsoon before sought shelter in the visitor centre so we could try and find something indoor to do, but being New Zealand they like being outdoors all the time so we were kinda screwed. We did however book a half day Lord of the Rings tour for Monday morning so we can go and see some of the sites where they shot the movie. Fingers crossed its not raining still!
Today, Sunday we had planned to go out and about again but its been howling with wind and rain all night and it hasn't stopped all day! Not much we could do about it so we decided to brave it anyway and took the Wellington Cable Car up to the Botanical Gardens. In hindsight it was a stupid idea as we got totally soaked and a few hours later we suffering the early stages of pneumonia sitting in the coffee shop next to our hotel talking about Brisbane :)
Anyway, once we had dried out we caught the local bus to Miramar which is where we went to the Weta Cave. Weta is the film company who did the special effects for Lord of the Rings, King Kong, Narnia and I Robot, and they have a small mini (very mini) museum of props and costumes plus a short behind the scenes film about the studios. It was alright but we were just too wet and cold by this point to really care so once we'd done we got the bus back to the hotel, so by 2pm Em was soaking in a hot and VERY bubbly bath :) This backpacking is a hard life at the moment!!
With the weather still being utter crap we just stayed in for the rest of the afternoon, watched the Indy 500 preview show on TV (Andy will miss the race for the first time since 1993 as its on at 3am), read some books before going to get some food and once again get totally and utterly soaked!!
Fingers crossed tomorrow will be dry so we can dress up as elves and hobbits at Isengard, rather than running round huddled up like Golum!!
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