Wellington - My Future Home!!

My wonderful weekend in Wellington!

Saturday morning Rachel and I packed up our suitcases and headed off to the airport for our weekend getaway to Wellington. Wellington is New Zealand's capital city. It is at the southernmost point of the North Island. A fun fact I learned from Rach is that when at the southernmost point at the North Island you are actually further south than the Northernmost point of the South Island. The top of the South Island is actually further North than the bottom of the North Island!

My first wow of the trip was actually our time spent in the airport. A grand total of 20 minutes before boarding the plane. We arrived, got our tickets and checked our bags: 5 minutes. Went to the bookstore there so I could buy postcards and Rach could get a book for George (her older son): 10 minutes. Went through security and boarded the plane: 5 minutes. Yes we arrived at our gate and got through security in just 5 minutes, something that could never happen nowadays in America! Their security checkpoint is just a metal detector and an X-ray machine. You place your bag on the conveyor belt (no need for a Ziploc with 3oz. containers all inside) and walk through the metal detector - with your shoes on! I am not a very seasoned traveler, only flying about 3 times in my life, all during college years, before hopping on the jet plane over here to NZ, so high security airports are all I've known.

We got to our seats and a very kind man gave me his window seat. I was very happy because it was such a beautiful day so I was able to take pictures of us flying over the rest of New Zealand as well as us flying into Wellington. Now, Wellington's airport is mildly terrifying! The runway is a strip of land that sticks out like a little peninsula. So as you fly in you get lower and lower while still over water. It looks like you will crash into the water when suddenly you realize there's a little strip of land that's come out from underneath you. Also, Wellington is the windy city! It blows Chicago out of the water. The winds here are coming directly from Antarctica with nothing in the way to slow them down. So there's also heaps of turbulence as you're coming in for the landing. For those of you I have flown with, you can imagine I didn't handle this part very well!

We got into the Wellington and met Rach's eldest son, George, and his girlfriend, Sasha. They are wonderful people! George has a great sense of humor and is also rather cynical about many things so we had a lot of laughs. Sasha is a very sweet girl with a laid back nature. She's welcoming and easy to talk to. I enjoyed their company very much. We headed out for lunch on the beach, and then took the bus up to Upper Hutt to meet the rest of Rachel's family. Her niece was having her 21st birthday party, so all of the family was going to be there, with a big BBQ and party. Unlike in America where many 21st birthdays are not remembered by the celebrants due to our legal drinking age, 21st birthdays here are typically a family event, celebrating the persons coming of age.I met many of Rach's siblings and other relatives. They are a very nice family. They all keep in touch and get together pretty often. It was great fun hanging out with them and celebrating Poppy's 21st. Poppy is a very talented writer. She has won many awards for her poetry and playwrights.

That night we took the train back from Upper Hutt to Island Bay where George and Sasha have a flat. (We experienced a lot of public transportation because Sasha's car has just broken down). The next morning we got up and had breakfast in the backyard before taking a walk down to the beach. George, Sasha, and a bunch of their friends get together every Sunday to play Ultimate Frisbee. They invited me to play with them as well that weekend. So we headed off to the park. At the park, we were greeted by two Ultimate Frisbee Club Teams practicing! We all joked about being a little amateur and embarrassed but quickly cheered up when Adam yelled out "dang and we forgot the beer this time!" So we ran around and played for fun for a while and tried hard not to watch the "pros" next to us!

After that we hopped the bus into town and started exploring. George and Sasha took us all over downtown. Wellington sort of reminds me of San Fransisco. It has similar architecture and the same steep hills with narrow streets. We went down Cuba Street where we saw the Bucket Fountain. This fountain is hilarious, it is supposed to be a series of buckets that begin to fill up with water at the top and then pour into the buckets below until finally reaching the lowest and biggest bucket which fills and then pours back into the base of the fountain. However, when it was constructed there were a few errors. Instead of the water pouring nicely into the lower buckets, it misses and splashes all over including splashing the people walking past it. They were going to fix the Bucket Fountain but everyone loved it so much that they decided to leave it. We stopped and got lunch at a cafe and took it down to the waterfront. We ate lunch relaxing on some grass and people watching, then headed into Te Papa Museum. Te Papa is a big museum that's a little overwhelming to walk through. They have so much and no clear layout of how to walk through it that you can get lost for days and still come out with needing to see more exhibits. Its free and has loads of exhibits though. We went through the Maori exhibit and also through an exhibit about everything that's made in New Zealand. It was very interesting and fun.
Our next plan was to get ice creams at coffees at Cafe Ice just down the wharf, but when we got there we saw there was about a half hour wait! Much to George's disappointment we just grabbed coffees from a different little cafe. George had been raving about Cafe Ice since the moment we'd arrived. Next we headed to the Cable Car. We rode up to the top and oh what a view! Wellington is beautiful! I have some wonderful pictures from the top there. We then walked through the little Cable Car Museum and then off into the botanical gardens. It was getting late and we were all getting tired so we didn't go far. Just sort of strolled around for a bit.
Finally it was time for us to head back down the Cable Car and hop a bus to the airport. We said goodbye to George and Sasha and headed off to catch our flight. (only another 20minutes in the airport till we were on our way.) We lucked out again, getting me a window seat. I took some beautiful pictures of the sun setting over the South Island Sounds. Its gorgeous!
Unfortunately, I can't post many pictures on here right now because the Internet at our house has cut out. I am posting all of these from our school computer lab. Hopefully soon I'll be able to load the pictures up so that all of you can enjoy seeing what I've just talked about.