Wellington 14th - 17th March

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Arrived in Wellington quite late on Monday evening after the 11 hour bus journey from wellington and courtesy of the bus driver deciding to not drop of at the city centre drop off point only the outer city stop i had to walk for around 40 mins trying to find my way to the city centre and then find a hostel. arrived a the hostel and decided to just dump my bags and head out in the hope i could find a bar that still had an open kitchen and get something to eat. found a place at around 9:00 and just managed to sneak in a quick bite to eat. i got talking to a couple of guys who were both travelling alone, nips from canada and richard from belfast, stayed and had a few drinks with them and then headed back to bed around midnight.

the next day i had somewhat of a lie in for once there wasnt to much noise in the room and so stayed in bed til around 11. once i had gotten up and sorted myself out i went to "te papa" the national museam of new zealand which is massive and has plenty of interesting exhibitions and interactive things to do sucha as the worlds biggest squid and a house which replicates what it would be like to be in an earthquake. after that i went for a walk around the city and saw the bee hive, westpac stadium and the basin reserve. i also found out why its nicknamed "windy welly" luckily though in the built up areas you can sheild yourself from the wind most of the time. in the evening i met up with richard again and went out for a few drinks and a few frames of pool was a bit more of a late one this time as we stayed in a bar and watched a band til gone 2. got back to the room around 3:30 no doubt making lots of noise and crashing about but people definately got there own back in the morning at around 6:30 when they got up.

wednesday was st patricks day and i was determined to have an early night as i was getting picked up by the bus at 7 to go to the ferry terminal and just about managed to in all it was a quiet day i never really did anything interesting and then was asleep by 9:30.

the following day and as i said up at the crack of dawn to get the ferry to picton on the south island. the ferry crossing is notoriously a rough one but it was ok for the most part and i even managed to curl up on a couch in the cafe and sleep for around half of the 3 hour journey so that was a bonus. so im in picton for the next two nights and then who knows.

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