Windy Wellington and other weekend away while here

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We have spent about 6 months working and living in windy Wellington. I never reaslised how windy a place could be but my god it has been windy here! Bascially the weather has been crap in Wellington from when we arrived to now, when we are about to leave in the middle of Summer. Very depressing and makes it hard to do anything outside.

Since being here we have had many a great meal and chai latte! Have really embrassed the cafe culture and will hope to continue that when we get home! We have been on a few walks and visted lots of local bays which have all been nice. Also saw a ballet, which was great (Russian Ballet Company) and a Kiwi play which was awful and put us off seeing anything else! Wellington is a nice, beautifal city (although I would prob call it a Town) but it just hasn't got enough going on for us. And the annoying thing is that when there is something going on tickets sell out in about 1 minute so you have no chance going anyway!

Whilst here we did a few weekend trips. The first one was skiing at Mount Ruapehu. That was sooooooooooo much fun! Neither of us have skiied before and so we got to learn together. Of course because of my natural sportsman ability I spent the first day on my bottom trying to avoid being hit by other beginners while Ian was really good. We are def hoping to go skiing again when we get home.

We also spent a weekend in the now infamous Hawks Bay (well it is to us anyway!) where we got engaged! I wrote an e-mail with the details of the weekend when it happened so am going to put it in here:

We had a really nice apartment in Hawkes Bay, this is it: http://www.bookabach.co.nz/cf_RentalSearch/dsp_listing.cfm?bachId=6670 and the views really were that amazing! On Friday night we were booked in to have a nice dinner in a local restaurant. Ian had organised it all. Before we left he was acting a bit strange and made a big thing about staying in the room to ‘tidy’ it when we should have been leaving. Turns out he was getting the ring out of his luggage and I had been in there getting ready so he needed to come up with an excuse for me to leave - wasn’t a very good one as I guessed something was up!

We get to the restaurant and it is shut, even though we have a reservation. They have a note on the door saying it is due to unforeseen circumstances and have booked us into a different place. In the end we had dinner in a Harvester type of place, which of course wasn’t very romantic and we both felt sick after eating the massive portions of food we were served! So he didn’t do it that night.

The next day we did a self-guided bike tour of the wineries in the area. When we were getting ready I didn’t know what to wear and was debating jogging bottoms as we were going to be on a bike all day. He’s exact words were ‘you don’t want to look like a pikey all day so why don’t you wear something nice!’. Again very suspicious as he doesn’t care what I look like and after travelling together has clearly seen me at my worst! So I put on a dress just incase something was up!!

We were happily doing our bike ride and had been to a couple of wineries. We then went off-roading through olive trees and vineyards (which was actually really difficult. I didn’t know how hard riding a bike in grass really was!). We stopped for our little packed lunch that we got with our bikes and were sitting on the ground eating it, surrounded by vines and on our own. Of course he let me finish my roll first as at that point in time nothing could have distracted me from the food!! He then said ‘I have a present for you’ and gave me the ring and said ‘Will you marry me’. It was very lovely! Didn’t say yes for a little while as I couldn’t believe it was real. I hoped he would ask me on the way home (in South America somewhere) but he said he wanted to do it now so that we could enjoy the experience and not be trampy travelers!! This is the vineyard that he proposed in: http://www.teawa.com/ Turns out that the wine that was growing was merlot, which is good as that is all I drink now so is def a sign! We got a bottle and celebrated that night by drinking it and eating home cooked fajitas!! Romantic or what!

So that was the engagement weekend! Other then the weekend aways we did got exploring the North Island for about 2 and a half weeks over Xmas and New Year. I'm going to write that experience in a different blog!

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