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Hello and greetings from Wellington, New Zealand
First of all we would both like to apologise for the lack of blogging since arrival. We have arrived here in the Land of Smiles and have been out exploring this lovely city and trying to spot ourselves some hobbits!
Staying in a cool Nomads hostel right in the centre of city. Great hostel - known as a flashpackers. Nice size kitchen and all that jazz, they even provide free (snack size) meals ( can upgrade for $4 though for a decent portion) and free tea yay!
Since we've been here, we have:
Friday 8th
We checked out the Te Papa museum aka Museum of New Zealand. On six floors, the history of Scottish Herritage in NZ, Maori history, Info about tikis, various artwork and scultures are laid out. We really enjoyed walking around and spent several hours here, still having not seen it all, so vowed to return.. it was free after all..
On a random walk around the city, we saw some happy hour offers so decided to go on a bar crawl. Started in a cool bar with three levels and free poo, then headed to the mexican bar next door for the 2 4 1 deals. We returned to our hostel bar and ended up meeting some of the new people in our room. Turned out they were two teachers from Reading and also a guy who totally looked French or Italian, but turned out to be German.. Pretty late, we all decided to head out and check outt he nightlife of the City. We tried going to one place (cant remember the name right now, but it sounded like a stripclub, hehe) but it turned out to be shut (on a Friday!!) so we headed to an Irish bar instead. Turned out to be a really fun night, they had a live band on and played most of the songs we shouted out : )
Saturday 9th
We checked out the city. Went on some random two hour walk just around the outskirts of the city and then ventured in. What's so lovely about this city is that the people here are so friendly and nice. Tim and I were looking for something and checking out a map by a set of traffic lights - a lady saw our confused faces and just came over and proceeded to try and help us. Everyone is smiley and just seems plain happy to be here. It really is a wonderful place. I already feel like I prefer it here to Australia.. but that's because I've actually met and seen loads more Kiwi's than I did.. say staying in Sydney.
The city is lovely. It has two major shopping and nightlife streets -Cuba and Courtenay Place. That's another thing we noticed about the city - nothing much happens on the nights you expect - Wednesdays and Saturdays are the only nights and days you tend to see anybody about - in town in the day or even at night, otherwise it's pretty quiet most of the time.
Sunday 10th
Hiked to the top of Mt Victoria to check out the fantastic views of the city and try to spot some areas where Lord Of The Rings was flimed. We had originally planned to do this on the Monday, as the hostel offered a free tour. We asked one of the guys about this on the Sunday and he said that the girl running these free tours had not been around for like two weeks. Bummer. So off we went on the Sunday. The hike was okay - not that much fun though. Literally on the side of a mountain and it was really slippery too with loads of leaves on these make shift walkways. We returned to the hostel and mentioned it to the guy, to which he replied he didnt even know there was a walkway that didnt include the road which lead to the top- we decided to take the road way on the trip down by the way..
Monday 11th
We went into town and took the Cable Car up to the Botanic Gardens.Checked out the Cable Car museum which clued us up on all the history of the Cable cars and what effort the guys went to restore some of the damaged cars. Turns out Cable Cars have quite a lot of history in Wellington. We enjoyed the walk bar to town via the Botanic Gardens which were really pretty.
Tuesday 12th
We met some of the people on our Contiki tour in the hostel bar in the evening. Turns out Contiki pretty much keep the bar running. Without them, they probably wouldnt have half as much custom. Not that it's a bad bar at akll (remember the free food?) but Contiki bring like 40 odd people up to four times a week. The group seemed pretty fun.. they all jumped up on the tables, dancing and chanting when the 'Bus Song' came on and playing various games for free shots at the bar. Looking forward to meeting them all properly and getting on our tour now. Bring on tomorrow! We're meeting them all at 7am at their hotel, so gonna be a long day for us! Plan is to go jetboating in the afternoon, after the 5 hour coach ride and then on a Cruise in the evening on Lake Taupo : )
That's all for now, hope you all feel updated...
Watch this space.
Much love
Ro and Tim
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