Wellington - the Capital
Trip Start
Apr 17, 2009
1
58
Trip End
May 09, 2010
Wellington, North Island, New Zealand
Wednesday, February 3, 2010
Wellington is a nice, bay front city with TERRIBLE weather. Everyone will tell you that the weather in “Welly” (the affectionate local term for Wellington) is horrible with tons of wind, cool temperatures, and lot of rain. This is a result of its positioning on the Cook Straight where weather fronts and seas meet creating bad ocean and weather conditions many days of the year.
However, despite its well deserved reputation for bad weather, Wellington is a very nice, cosmopolitan little city. The downtown is clean and walkable with several pedestrian malls and many shops. The weather was cloudy and windy, but we managed to avoid rain during our brief stay. As New Zealand’s capital, the city boasts numerous government buildings as well as the national museum- Te Papa Museum.
We walked from our hotel along the town’s waterfront to visit the Te Papa Museum and enjoyed it a great deal. We learned a lot about the geology and the history of New Zealand. It is a relatively new museum and for a country of just 4 million people (less population than metro Atlanta) the museum was very well done. We had heard that it was an exceptional museum, but compared to the ones we have visited in London, Washington, Rome, and Athens we would say that it was just a “good” museum.
We were only in Wellington for one night and stayed at the Novotel in the heart of downtown. It was a pleasant enough hotel at a good rate and located within walking distance of everything we wanted to see. The odd thing about the hotel was that to get to the parking garage you had to walk right through the center of the formal dining restaurant and board an elevator that was basically positioned along a wall in the middle of the restaurant.
That evening we had a very nice dinner at a small and low key restaurant called Two Souls. The staff was very friendly and the food was quite good. We walked around the pedestrian malls and streets that were bustling with cafes and bars and a few Bohemian looking people.
The next morning we got up bright and early and drove our van to the ferry terminal where we took a car/passenger ferry across to Picton on the South Island. The ferry ride was uneventful but quite expensive because we were taking our car across with us.
On a side note- here are a few things we have learned during the last couple of weeks.
In the grocery stores they refer to and label cheddar cheese as “Tasty Cheese”
Prior to the arrival of Europeans to New Zealand there were no four legged animals here- just birds and humans!
Most ATM machines will not dispense any denomination higher than a $20 bill when making a withdrawal. That is quite a pain when you are withdrawing $500 to pay for the rental house that only takes cash as payment.
Like most of Europe, grocery stores here do not refrigerate eggs. Eggs are often found on the grocery store shelves along with the breakfast cereals or next to the coffee section!
They refer to porto-johns or porto-potties as “Long Drops”
Comments
Yeah, Rich took a great picture of Mel coming out of a "Long drop!"
Hey John and Rich...this is Scott Cook, author of NZ Frenzy. I've been following your tales for a while now (anonymously..hahaha). Google told me that you mentioned my book, so I caught your thread.
I'd like to chat a bit about what you thought about NZ Frenzy. Please email me at NZFrenzy@yahoo.com. Where are you..are you still on your trip??