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Good afternoon all, from a thoroughly damp and grey capital city!
The journey to Wellington took about 4-5 hours with a couple of food stops, and we managed to find Rosemere Backpackers pretty quickly after getting into Wellington.
Just to mention our approach to the city, we had heard on the radio that it was really foggy everywhere, which had delayed the landing of the plane carrying our dearest Royals, but we didn't think it'd be that bad by the time we got there given planes were landing about an hour before we got near...how wrong we were.
We didn't see the city until we were directly in it, due to the thick low hanging fog as far as the eye can see - which wasn't very far! The sweeping rain wasn't too appealing either...
So, we found the hostel, and after 20 minutes trying to park the car on a stupidly steep hill in a restricted space, we entered the hostel and got to see our room; first impressions weren't all that bad in honesty.
But once we realised the window didn't fully close, the rain wasn't stopping and the wind was getting stronger, we started to change that opinion!
I'll put it one way, a combination of a cold room and lack of parking made for quite an angry 24 hours, we did find parking but I'll mention that later.
We went for a walk around after realising we didn't want to sit about, and went all the way through the town centre looking in shops, theatres and cinemas. We saw the popular cinema where the LOTR and Hobbit premier's were held - a nice place, but not much about it that immediately gave you the homely, traditional feeling of a cinema!
But alas, we know Jenny can't go into cinemas without watching something, although this time was more random - we had decided we would come to watch 12 years a slave today, however after walking into the Reading Cinema for shelter from the rain, we saw it was showing about an hour away, and given we had nothing else to do, we decided we would watch it yesterday instead and ate a good looking, but bad tasting, Malaysian/Thai buffet - it was that unsatisfying we both had to have a cheeseburger from the neighbouring macdonalds!!
The film itself is really good, powerful and intense, eye-opening and educational, very much deserving of its 3 Oscar awards (Even though Chiwetel Ejiofor should have got the Best Actor award instead of Matthew curly hair McConaughey) - we both enjoyed it as much as it was very upsetting!
We got 10 hours of sleep to see if the sun could find his way out...but no, today has been a dank, grey and depressing day in the capital; it has not stopped raining at all, relentless in its downpour, and the wind hasn't helped!
We had to move the car, and spent about 45 minutes driving around the entire city trying to find voucher parking that was somewhat close to us...with no luck. We ended up parking 25 minutes away, which was not too fun as I'm sure you can imagine given the conditions - in England I'd say; 'I'm piss wet through!!' but 'I'm soaked' will do for the rest of you!
With struggling for something to do that didn't result in getting more wet (although I doubt it would be possible!), we went to 'Weta Cave' which is a movie based centre that has models, collectables, props and books. As you probably guessed, there is a Hobbit/LOTR connection here as Peter Jackson is a co-founder - there are some brilliant things here so check out our pictures!
We've had enough of the Rosemere, the hostel isn't homely with its location or decor - the downstairs back doors are open so the stairwell stinks of smoke and also is freezing cold. The kitchen (described as ultra modern) is always full of people sitting around, even if they aren't eating, and it's about as modern as my backside!
All of that, and our own personal bed-freezer, means we are checking out 2 days early tomorrow and going to YHA Wellington, located closer to our parked car, and is a good hostel chain - clean, spacious and warm!!!
We're sitting at Starbucks with hot choco's to keep out of the rain right now, and have been for about 2 hours - we're trying to stay here as long as we can before heading out to eat at 'Pizzeria Napoli' before sleeping so we can leave Rosemere quicker, and spend as less time as possible in there!
We'll give you an update later this week, until then, please; do not panic!
DJ
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