Wellington, North Island, New Zealand

22nd November – 24th November 2017

Almost an hour after boarding the bus at Taupo, to go to Wellington, we eventually set off. We were delayed as one of the other buses was delayed coming in from Rotorua and there were passengers on there that needed to get on our bus, so it was annoying for us, but it wasn’t the driver’s fault.

As I knew the bus was going to be a long journey and we had had lots of early starts recently, I spent the first part of it having a well needed nap, which Joe thought it was hilarious to photograph, even though he napped too. We had a short stop for the driver at around 4, before continuing on to Wellington. For the next part of the journey, we watched some Netflix on my laptop, which helped to pass the time nicely.

After arriving in Wellington almost an hour late, we were luckily booked into the hostel just across the road from the station, so we didn’t have far to walk at all. We checked in and put our bags in our room before going straight to the kitchen to make dinner, as we were both hungry.

Dinner was a boring one, as we were just using what we had left (which wasn’t much), so Joe had fried eggs on toast and I had scrambled – not the most exciting but there wasn’t much we could do about it. After we had eaten, we had a quick walk out to the shop to suss out where it was and get some juice because we wanted some excitement to our dinner.

When we got back from the shop, we went up to the room and chilled out. It was already quite late because of the delay, so we spent the night doing a bit of research for the next day, before we finally went to bed.

The next morning, we treated ourselves to a lie in; although I was awake at about 7.30 anyway because of my body clock. We had quite a relaxed morning, as we had nothing booked in and could just work to our own schedule for the day.

When we got up, at around 9, we got ready and had some breakfast. For breakfast, I made us some banana pancakes, which was a nice change from toast. We ate the pancakes, before finishing getting ready so that we could head out.

Our first plan of the day was to go up on the cable car to get a view of the city. Although we got a little lost on the way to the cable car stop, we found it eventually and got a return ticket to the top. The cable car itself was an old fashioned car which had a nice effect to it.

When we got to the top, which only took about five minutes, we took some photos before having a walk round. We didn’t really know what to do with ourselves, so at first, we just had a wander.

We found the Botanical Gardens, so walked around them, which was nice and relaxed. We spent the time doing some walking, then having a rest, then walking again and resting again, it was nice and chilled.

After about an hour and a half, we got the cable car back down to the city. As we didn’t have any food that we could take out as a packed lunch, we had to go back to the hostel for lunch, as we had some soup that we could have. On the way back, we did a food shop for the next few days.

When we got back to the hostel, we ate our lunch and chilled out for about half an hour, before going back out again to see the city.

Our next stop of the day, was to go and see the Te Papa museum – something that had been recommended to me by other travellers I met in Fiji and something that was highly recommended when researching what to do in Wellington. We walked along the waterfront towards the museum, which was a really nice walk. It took us a while to get to the museum as we had a nice slow stroll along the front and kept stopping to take in the views along the way, but that’s what made it so much nicer.

When we reached the museum, the entry was free, so we were able to just walk in and have a look at the exhibitions. The exhibitions were amazingly done. They had some interesting information about their country and lots of things that happen to it and affect it. I never knew how much New Zealand was affected by volcanoes and earthquakes until I arrived here. One of the exhibitions they had was an exhibition about the war in New Zealand: it was a very powerful and sad exhibition which had huge models of the soldiers, which were unbelievably lifelike.

After we had looked around the exhibitions, we went to the top floor where there was a viewing deck over the city, before leaving and walking back along the waterfront. On the way back along the waterfront, we stopped for some ice cream. We ate our ice cream sat on the front with the views of the bay.

Once we had rested for a little bit, we carried on with our walk. Instead of going straight back to the hostel, we walked up into the centre and along the main street. Seeing all of the Christmas decorations when you’re walking along in the heat just didn’t seem right at all, but the tree did look pretty though.

After looking at the decorations, we made our way back to the hostel. We had a bit of time to chill out before cooking dinner. During the food shop, we had thought ahead and bought enough food for the next four dinners, so I cooked them all at once and put them into the Tupperware tubs – it’s so much easier doing it this way, rather than cooking each night. By the time that we ate, it was quite late, so after we had finished clearing up, we went up to the room, to get ready for bed.

Although we didn’t have any real plans for the next day, I set an alarm for 8 anyway, as we had to be up and ready to check out and neither of us had packed. I got up first and got myself ready. Just after Joe got up, and we were about to go for breakfast, the fire alarm went off. It was a good job we were up, so we grabbed the key and left our room.

As we were heading down the corridor, we realised that no one else could hear this alarm and that it was only coming from our room. We went and told reception and apparently it happens sometimes, so they came and sorted it – it’s a good job we were already up because that’s not an alarm I would have liked.

After the alarm was switched off, we had some breakfast, which wasn’t as exciting as the pancakes, and finished packing before checking out. To store our bags for the day, we had to pay to put them in lockers, which was annoying, as most hostels just store them for free for us. As we were checking out, the man in front of us in the queue got his bag put behind the counter for him, because the lockers weren’t working properly. When it was our turn, I asked if she could keep our bags and she said that we would have to wait for the lockers to be fixed – a little unfair but okay, so Joe went and got some cash out while I waited. As I watched the queue go down, the couple of girls behind us in the queue, then got their bags put behind the desk for them – this was very annoying because she was letting some people put their bags behind but not us. Joe eventually found a cash machine, so we could store our bags and head out.

As we only had one morning left in Wellington, we weren’t initially really sure of what to do. We had a quick research while we were sat in reception and decided to go on a walk up Mt. Victoria. As we had to pay for the lockers and both of our big backpacks fit into one locker, I refused to pay for another one when we didn’t really need to, but this meant that I had to carry my smaller backpack around all day when it only has things in it that we don’t need all of the time and it is quite heavy, so that was annoying.

We set off on our walk again, and started off my heading along the waterfront. As we got to the other side of the waterfront, we walked through the town and up the hill to the mountain. It was quite a tough walk, as there were some steep inclines, it was very hot, I was in flip flops (as I didn’t know the plan when I got dressed), and I had the heavy bag which was completely unnecessary.

When we got to the top, it was all worth it though (as it always is). We sat there for a while, enjoying the view and taking lots of photos, before we started to make our way back down.

Getting down took half the time that it took to get up, even if we did get a little lost on the way. When we got back to the bottom, we treated ourselves to another ice cream – we had definitely earnt it by the time we made it to the ice cream shop! We had just enough time to sit on the front again and enjoy our ice creams, before we had to walk back to the hostel to collect our things.

Back at the hostel, we collected our bags together, before heading towards the bus stop. As Wellington was our last stop in the North Island and we were heading to the South Island, we had to get a shuttle bus, from the bus stop, to the ferry terminal, so that we could catch our ferry.

To say that Wellington is the capital city of New Zealand, it doesn’t have the crazy hussle and bussle that most capital cities have. It has a great balance of city life, waterfront life and suburb life. When we sat along the front, people watching, we were surprised by the calm and relaxed nature of everyone, including the business people – the only people with any urgency about them were the runners, which was nice. We had a great time doing a mix of different activities and would have loved a few extra days to chill, if we could, but now it’s time to leave the island altogether and head down south.

To travel is to live, Katie x