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Published: January 28th 2008
We wake up this morning and leave the hostel slightly later than planned (we had hoped to be off by 8am but because our washing got locked in the laudry room overnight we had to wait for reception to open at 9am - whoopsies!).
After quite a scenic 5 hour drive down (and it was all me - no beeps this time, getting better!) we arrive at Wellington and our first impressions are that it looks quite industrial, but then again I suppose it is the capital city. And it's raining so things never look as nice when it's dull!
We find the a hostel called Rowena's Place in our discount guide that says it has free off road parking so head for there, the guide says it used to be a women's hostel during the war and to be honest I don't think they've done much to update it since then!
As it's about 3pm we chuck our stuff in our room and head out. We've discovered that we have become quite lazy with having Lucy, at first we would take all of our backpack into the room, then we reduced it to just taking our rucksacks
Nice and Cosy!
A Mauri house (well, a replica)with the clothes we needed in and here we reduced it even further to our p.j's, a clean pair of knickers, our bath towel and our food!
We've read about the free museum here called Te Papa which apparently is the heart of NZ so we thought we would give it a try and are actually free impressed, especially as it's a free one! The place is massive and has loads of different area's including an earthquake simulator, Mauri Meeting Houses and a section on Scottish immigrants!
We decide to check out the city and stumble across the Parliment building - quite different as you can see!
After that we come outside and head towards the city's cable car which Lonely Planet has said it's a must do as it has great views of the city. After walking around the town in a big circle we finally find signs that direct us back to where we had just come from - typical!
We pay our fare and have a ride up and at the top we can see what the Lonely Planet means about the views - although it isn't half as impressive as we had
imagined (maybe our expectations are getting too high!). Di has seen a sign for an Observatory that she wanted to look at so after following the track for 20 minutes we get there to find it's closed for refurbishment!
It's quite funny in a way beciause everything that the guides have bragged about up here turns out to be not quite as impressive, but we have a good giggle anyway.
We get the tram back down and after wondering around the town and commenting on how quite it was (it was like a ghost town, very unusual - especially for a capital city) we find out it is actually a public holiday. Weird, as in Wigan the place would be heaving with people in pubs! They must have celebrated too much over the weekend (hopefully!).
We think it's rude not to have a drink in every town we overnight in so after a cheeky Guiness in an Irish pub, we head back to the hostel for tea and another cheeky lager of our own.
Tomorrow - the South Island - we wonder what adventures lie ahead there . . . . . .
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