Blogs from Wellington Region, North Island, New Zealand, Oceania - page 6

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So it has begun... Wellington on a Plate!!! This past weekend was the start of the Wellington food festival which takes place throughout the month of August. As I mentioned in a pervious blog I signed up to volunteer for BEERVANA, which is a two day beerfest with four, four hour long sessions. I volunteered for the Friday night session from 5-10. As a volunteer I had to work one session and then I got to attend a session for free with twenty free beer tokens. On Friday I walked down to Beervana which was being held in our Rugby stadium, with three of my friends. Upon arrival I got assigned to the Canterbury Bar. Before the doors opened at six all the bar tenders had to taste the beers that they would be handling, lucky ... read more

If my last entry has left you confused I am sorry, it was my way of trying to cleverly tell Robert and Erin that I would be able to return to the states in time for their wedding. I spent the first couple of days of classes figuring out a course schedule that has no final exams and allows me to be completely done with classes the 14th of October. This weekend called for a rainy Saturday so we were all bummed that we would not be able to really get out and explore more. However, when I awoke on Saturday morning it was clear and sunny. On a last minute decision me, Mara, Pablo, Emma, and Ben walked 4 hours down to the Island Bay region of Wellington, which is the southern most point of ... read more

Beautiful Wellington Day 1 - Friday After finding sustenance in my Grande Caramel Macciato in Starbucks, feeling refreshed & refueled, I ventured off into the unknown city (well, unknown to me as everyone else looked like they knew where they were going!). It is so quaint with streets darting off everywhere, people everywhere and little boutique shops that look far too expensive to even walk into! Very arty & chic was the vibe that I got from the city of Wellington. I kept walking and exploring and takings pics and was enthralled by the sights. Wellington has trolley buses...like trams, they are powered by overhead electricity source which they are connected to by cables, but they are buses on wheels, not on tracks. I haven't seen vehicles like these before - fascinating. I kept walking and ... read more

Geo: -41.2865, 174.776Part Two: Tongariro to Wellington. We woke up to pouring rain and gusty northerlies (saw that in the newspaper and I love that description!). Luckily it was down to a drizzle when we had to load up the car. The drive to Wellington was lots of up and down hill, tons of curves and, since it was raining most of the time, I was going pretty slow. The good thing is that New Zealand drivers are pretty polite and I never felt too pressured to go faster. There are lots of places to pull over and let others pass and we also stopped at a few scenic waysides. One was a nice waterfall and others were just nice lookouts over valleys. Eventually we descended out of the hills and the road became a little ... read more