New Zealand, Wellington Days 19 and 20

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Monday November 14, 2011

Today we took the ferry from the South Island to the North Island. We heard a gentleman explaining that the ferry were on is the largest ferry in the fleet. Getting on the ferry was somewhat painless. We parked our car in the a ramp leading up to the deck where cars are parked. Once filled the ramp we parked on is raised up so more cars can be parked under the raised ramp. Once we get to the passenger decks, there are plenty of places to sit and relax. The ferry has nice reclining seats with plenty of legroom. The journey takes 3 1/2 hours and passes though Cook Straight between the north and south islands. The water was fairly calm so the ride was not rough at all. We walked around and were quite surprised to see a semi truck full of cows. The top of the trailer was open so the cows could stick their heads out. It must have been cold for them as once the ferry was in the straight the weather turned cold.

We get into Wellington at 4:20 right on schedule. Just before docking, they instructed all passengers that had a car to go to their car to ready for departure from the ferry. We see that we were correct in our assumption that they would lift the section we parked on previously. We watch as all the cars below us disembark. Now they lower the section we are parked on. We feel like we are rolling backwards. There are 5 lanes of parked cars on our level. Three of them are facing the front of the ferry and the other two are facing the back of the ferry. The lanes facing the back of the ferry drive down to the level below and make a U-turn to exit the ferry. This is done in an orderly fashion as directed by personnel. The three lanes facing the front of the ferry are next. As we see the first lane of cars start their route to the lower level, we realize we are going to be the last car off the ferry. It took a little over an hour before we got off the ferry. Now we have officially arrived in Wellington.

Wellington is another big city and our GPS steers us astray a few times before we find our apartment. Bruce greets us at the office. Bruce is not the office manager, he is a very muscular , friendly bulldog. Maybe he is the official mascot. We are right in downtown and close to everything. As we have experienced elsewhere, shopping is big here in Wellington. Cuba Street is where there are a lot of shops and places to eat. The street itself is closed to vehicles but as you come to the end of each block, you have to deal with traffic. We find a few places Jim read about in his Beer book and go to Mac's Brewhouse for dinner, yes another brewery.

Jim asked for a table and we are told it will be "awhile" and that we can eat at the bar. Jim asks for the dinner menu and we are told the bar menu and dinner menu are different. We cannot order from the dinner menu at the bar. Jim goes back to put our name in and the woman instructs Jim to come tell her if she has not called our name in 30 minutes. We were not sure we were going to be eating here. We have read that service is not that great in New Zealand. While everyone is extremely friendly, the service is just adequate. We are quite surprised when we are called to a table. Jim has the lamb shanks and Lisa has a steak. Our waiter was originally from Florida and he has been in New Zealand for a couple of months, we noticed his accent had not developed into full Kiwi yet. After dinner we head back to our apartment to relax as the weather was cold.

Tuesday November 15, 2011

We found out about an application called Welly Walking Tours you could download to your iPhone. One of the tours was the Foodies Walking Tour. So we start out the morning by hitting the first one on the tour by having breakfast at Floriditas. We decided to split an order of poached eggs, sausage, and hollandaise sauce. It was a delightful dish similar to eggs benedict. The sauce was delicious and the sausage was homemade with lots of sage. What a great way to start the day. But the day is very cold and windy. Lisa packed only a sweater and it was not keeping her warm so we decided to buy her a warmer coat and a local clothing store. Now that she is warm we headed to the Te Papa museum. The museum is free and the exhibits are on 6 floors of the building. The museum focuses on the history of New Zealand, its culture, environment, animals, and people throughout the years. What we did not expect is see on display a giant squid that was caught a few years back. Apparently the only giant squid on display in the world. The eyes were the size of soccer balls and the whole thing is persevered in a large glass tank. The guide said that if you cut the body into rings they would the size of truck tires, (now that would take a lot of cocktail sauce to eat). We have been to a lot of museums and the Te Papa is world class. They even had an earthquake simulator where we went inside a small house and the whole thing shook to simulate an earthquake of 5.1.

All this walking made us hungry. It is time to check back in with the Foodies Walking Tour to find our next stop. We go to Pilbo's Mexican restaurant as we have been missing the taste of spicy Mexican food. The restaurant is located down a little alley at the very end of the street. We shared a potato enchilada and chicken tacos with a wonderful sauce made from orange and achiote. So far the walking tour is 2 for 2. The tour also has a food store listed as a must see. We have to get a few more grocery items anyway so we go to Fresh at Moore Wilson store. This is a specialty store and they also sold ready to eat items like sandwiches. But this is only one of the stores. They also had a store for commercial sales, a liquor store, and a restaurant supply store. Jim was happy to see in the middle of the food store a large refrigerator full of local and imported cheeses. Good thing we already had enough cheese back at the apartment or he would have bought more cheese.

We checked out a few more pubs from Jim's beer book. One was a Japanese restaurant - Hashigozake Cult Beer Bar. This is the first place we saw Sierra Nevada. pale ale available. In fact there were quite a few American and English beers and Monday night football was playing on the TV. There were even three hand pumps serving real ale! This is not what we expected from a Japanese restaurant. We head back to the apartment for a rest before going out to dinner. Once again, the sky opened up and it started to pour. The wind hit gusts up to 100 KPH (65 MPH) on the hill tops. Tonight we opt for bread, cheese and wine for dinner at the apartment. Tomorrow we will have a long travel day. We head north to Rotorua with an expected travel time of approximately 6 1/2 hours on mostly two lane roads.

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Photos

Driving onto the Ferry
Leaving Picton and boarding the ferry

Cows out for a ferry ride
We were wondering where these cows were headed and most likely not a happy ending

Cooks Straight
We came across a passing ferry through the Cook Straight

Te Papa
The Te Papa museum which housed New Zealand historical information and exibits

Mac's Brew House
Average beer decent food

Beehive Parliament Building
The Parliament building in Wellington, capital of New Zealand, called the bee hive building because of its distinctive shape