I Think the Grinch Stole Christmas

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It was with a heavy heart that we left Tina and Pamela in Palmerston North and headed down to the Kiwi capital, Wellington, in time for Christmas and New Year. Wellington is the city that Glynn and I potentially earmarked as home for our move to New Zealand so it's been very interesting to see the place for real.

We arrived late on the 23rd after a much delayed bus journey caused by the lack of a driver. We're staying in the Wildlife House hostel, a huge zebra-striped building right in the middle of the city and have a standard private room with no bathroom at a pretty high price owing to a Bank Holiday premium on top of the normal room rates. The room at least is big and comfy with a sofa plus the hostel offers free unlimited internet access - when you can get the other residents off it!

Christmas Eve was a quiet affair where we spent the afternoon roaming the streets and shops of Wellington. One of the funkier places called Cuba Street had a retro, hip feel to it with interesting boutiques and quirky bars and cafes along the pedestrianisation walkway. In general though, the layout of Wellington reminded us a lot of English towns and cities - narrowish streets, pavements that aren't quite wide enough and a cramped, dreary overall feel although much of that was probably down to the wet and windy weather. We sought solace that evening in the local Regent cinema where we went to see Deja Vu starring Denzil Washington, which was enjoyable.

As for Christmas Day, well it was probably the quietest one on record for either of us. We checked in too late to be included in the big Christmas dinner being knocked up by the longer-term residents who proceded to take over the kitchen for most of the day. That meant we couldn't even cook ourselves anything nice and had to make do with instant noodles for our Christmas dinner owing to a lack of pans, cooker space and cutlery with the big dinner in full swing. We felt sad to be so left out of everything and ultimately retreated back to our room.
The only saving grace for the day was curling up on the sofa and enjoying several more episodes of Battlestar Galactica on DVD. Not quite how we imagined Christmas to turn out but it was still good just to be together and know that we are still only halfway through our wonderful overseas adventures.

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Comments

[mom and dad &lee]

new year
hi kids happy new year to you both hope you are enjoying yourselfs there everybody sends there love cant wait to see you both take care ps i hope new year was better than xmas for you x x x x x x x

[Linda]

Christmas
Hi there - Sounds like you had a nice private and quiet Christmas. Hope it was a good one anyway.