Weekend in Welly!

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Conveniently there is a mini cinema room in our apartment building, so Tuesday has turned into our regular movie night which saves a few bucks on seeing half decent new films at the cinema.

On the weekend, Eric, Lieke 2, Anke and I went to Wellington! Left Friday at 5pm and landed at 6pm. It felt so strange going on a flight that short, considering my last one was 18 hours and the shortest one I’ve done previously was only 3 hours to Spain. We got in the airport shuttle bus and after 2 minutes Anke realised she left her wallet in the airport toilet! (With $300 cash in!). Luckily the mini bus turned back (reluctantly) so we rushed back to the toilets and luckily somebody had handed it in with everything still there so that was a relief! Losing Anke’s wallet actually saved us money because we got a taxi back instead which was 10 bucks cheaper!

We went out that evening to find somewhere to eat and came across a place called Hog’s Breath Cafe which was a really cool restaurant and did 18 hour slowly cooked prime rib steaks! It was like cutting through butter and wasn't too expensive either. My El Grande went down very well! Also went to a few bars/clubs after.

So we just had the Saturday to see Wellington which turned out to be the perfect amount of time. Started off at the Museum of New Zealand and spent a few hours there. It was pretty big and had about six floors so plenty to do/see. Personal favourite of ours was a music mixing/dj machine thing.

In the afternoon we went up the cable car, saw some decent views of Wellington and walked back down through the Botanic Gardens which were really nice. On the way back we checked out the parliament buildings and then crashed out at the hostel for a power nap in the evening. After we did some drinking games (ring of fire) in our hostel room........Eric (French - I think his nationality is important here) cannot drink! However Anke and Lieke (Dutch) represented their country well (as did I of course).

6am and the alarm goes off.........after being told about the amazing views of the North Island from the train, we had to get up at 7.25am for the 13 hour journey (it’s a steam train)..........well the views were quite nice but in hindsight, when a flight is the same price, I would have taken that option! So the first few hours we all crashed out, unlike the train enthusiast near us who was giving the guy next to him running commentary, so I don’t think he appreciated all the negative comments coming for our hung-over and tired opinions. However the views didn’t really appear until a few hours into the journey.

Overall, I didn’t find the train journey too bad as I’ve always had worst after spending 15 hours on a long, smelly, hot Eastern European night train, and we had Uno and cards to keep us entertained......

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