Wellington, Day 2: or maybe pizza.

nothing tastes better
than porter after a hike
except maybe fries

Wellington, Day 2: nature time.

Finally, we slept past 7am! Acclimation: check.

Had a quick breakfast and headed to the bus stop to find Island Bay. Jill ran across this walk along the coast, just 5 miles south of the city, in her guidebook and even with overcast skies it really delivered.

looks hobbity to me

red rock reward

from whence we came

lazy afternoon nap

master of the house, doling out the charm

The sun came out while we had lunch at The Bach Cafe and we took our time getting back to the bus.

best post-hike beverage evah

sea blue sea

Back in town we rode the cable car up to the Botanic Gardens, a huge layout featuring beautiful flowers, a peaceful bush walk, cool statues and other artsy things... And a boot camp and rugby match, because it is New Zealand after all.

human sundial demonstration

It turned out to be a really lovely day, and there were some nice views of the city from the gardens.

Wellington from above

Had dinner in and packed up for the ferry ride to Picton. After four days here, I am starting to see why people say the South Island is the place to be...

Wellington, Day 1: have I mentioned that I love vacations?

rainy wellington
still a hundred and one times
better than cubeland

Wellington, Day 1: settling in.

I hate waiting at airports while I'm on vacation, and apparently I did everything in my power this morning to make sure that wouldn't happen. We left a little late, sat in traffic for 20 minutes and had to run to catch the plane. We made it... barely.

no one likes this traveler

The flight from Auckland to Wellington was less than an hour. Wellington's airport was quaint, like most of what we saw of the city itself.

sheepie!

We made our way to the next apartments (City Life - even with their ridiculous 30-minute-only-in-the-lobby wifi access they are already worlds better than the Waldorf Stadium in Auckland) and headed down to the Wharf to find food. D4 was the perfect find.

halloumi cheese, where have you been all my life?

After lunch we wandered around the wharf for a bit and ran across the Te Papa museum. It had gotten rave reviews from various people and since it was a bit drizzly we decided to check it out. Even with a good night's sleep we found the exhibits and general navigation much more confusing than the Auckland Museum, but still worth the price of admission ($0). The highlight for me was definitely the "sheep cam" - watch sheep get herded from a sheep's perspective! watch sheep eat from a sheep's perspective! watch sheep from a sheep's perspective! etc. - but the giant squid exhibit was also very interesting.

Wellington wharf from Te Papa statue garden
(not pictured: statues... um, there were none)

Wandered around a bit more downtown and quickly decided we were ready for some nature. Tomorrow there is talk of a seal/beach walk and then the botanic gardens. Fingers crossed that the weather holds out!

I swore I would not eat bread again today, but the mushroom/feta/pine nut/spinach pizza at Scopa won me over. We at least coupled it with a salad of rocket (lettuce), cauliflower, fennel and pomegranate...

and more celebratory drinks, of course

After dinner Kim and I enjoyed some local music (The Filthy Two, an Irish folk band who were surprisingly clean) at Molly Malone's and then headed back. Not sure what everyone else did at that point because I passed out cold!