Advertisement
Published: November 29th 2006
Edit Blog Post
Botanic Gardens - cakes
This is the most excellent Brazilnut & pineapple cake, with a backdrop of Scandanavian poppies We drove the last little bit to Wellington and right into the Centre to the Youth Hostel, which was exactly where the map said it should be. It was full, so we were forced to spend the night in a proper hotel. This turned out to be very fortunate, as the hotel had a two for one offer on evening meals - we each got an 8 ounce steak, two eggs and real home cooked chips and two beers for a grand total of 29 dollars (ten pounds to you and me) and it was delicious.
We returned the hire car two days early, as it's just a pain having a car in the city centre. We got a daytripper bus ticket and have been using it to its full.
Today we took the cable car up to the Botanic Gardens and then went to Karori, where Graham & Rachel lived while in NZ. We didn't find Sunshine Avenue, which is where their house was - and we didn't find the Karori wildlife sanctuary either. I think we went too far on the bus. Willy eventually asked an old lady for directions, she said she'd take us by
car as she was going that way anyway, which was incredibly nice of her.
The wildlife park is supposed to be a bird sanctuary, but we saw very few birds: we've seen lots more on just ordinary walks we've been on. It was however a pleasant walk through the woods with more huge trees.
We went back to the Botanic Gardens and had cakes in the Rose Garden - and came across a pineapple and Brazil nut cake, which came a pretty close second to Billy's carrot cake. (Billy's carrot cake is the standard by which all cakes we eat are judged and most are nowhere near close).
Wellington, despite its harbour front is not a patch on Leith docks, the Albert Docks or even the Glasgow river side developments. It's nicer than Auckland, but that's not saying much. NZ towns in general lack character and to be fair Wellington has several reasonable buildings butr like much of new Zealand lots of it seems, at least to our eyes, cheap and a bit tacky/temporary.
Went out to a local Mexican to eat - probably the worst meal we've had in NZ.
Weds - went out to
see St Paul's Catherdral allegedly it had nice modern stained glass personally I wasn't too impressed however we then went to seehte old ST Paul's (now downgraded to a mere church which was an old wooden building built during the mid 1800s and it was truly magnificent beautiful old beams, floors etc using the native NZ trees Kauri, Rimu, Rata really beautiful huge joists and beams.
As it had turned really cold and windy we spent much of the afternoon in the Museum.
May be a while before we get a chance to update this as we're of to the south Island tomorrow to start another WOOF near Christchurch
Advertisement
Tot: 0.334s; Tpl: 0.011s; cc: 14; qc: 69; dbt: 0.1553s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb