Mt Victoria is the big hill across the bay...
11:18pm, Carollin Hotel, Wellington
Free internet at last!!!! Our hotel for the next 3 days has free, unlimited bandwidth, internet! We also have a reasonably priced ($95) room with full bathroom, and friendly staff. Great budget place to stay in Wellington… Didn't get out of bed till 8:45am this morning. Yogurt and cereal for breakfast. Checked out ($20 key deposit back) ~9:45am, and hit the road, aiming south towards Wellington under mostly blue skies. We passed many deeply discounted fruit stands, stopping at one to buy a few pounds of braeburn apples that were ~30cents/lb! Hopefully we'll continue to see more cheap fruit stands on the south island.
While driving through one of the many small towns along route 1, I suddenly heard Wendy exclaim, "There's an Icebreaker's outlet store!". I looked to the right and saw the store front, and quickly made a right turn to park. Most of my clothing (and much of Wendy's) on this trip is Icebreakers (merino wool made in NZ), so we had to investigate an Outlet store from Icebreakers' homeland. We also noticed many other outlet stores up and down the street. Turns out Otaki is loaded with outlet stores. The best deals at the Icebreaker store were still in line with good deals at Sierra Trading Post, which was somewhat surprising. Just down the street we visited New Zealand Nature Clothing, where Wendy found a pair of merino wool arm warmers, something she had been dreaming about all year. She also bought a pair of $10NZ hiking shorts.
We continued onto Wellington, driving along the blue-green bay as we arrived at NZ's capitol ~1pm. Driving in Wellington is nasty, with lots of one-way roads, however Wendy did a great job navigating us to our hotel up on a hill just outside the city center.
Mt Victoria is the big hill across the bay...
We were pleased with our large room, and after putting our food in the fridge, made the 10 minute walk into the city. We walked down Cuba street, full of shops, restaurants, and takeaways, where we had some kebabs for lunch.
A water fountain puzzle thing on Cuba Street. Another street corner in downtown Wellington...
Then we took a short cable car ride up a hill to a park, where we walked back down to town through the botanical gardens.
Flowers along the park sidewalks...
Cool vegetation and trees...
A look down at the botanical gardens...
Wendy loves lavender and duckies...
Wendy took a bunch of pics inside the greenhouse, as can be seen below...
We walked back south across town, looking at restaurants for dinner, until we decided on a Lebanese kebab place for dinner on Caroline street, opting to visit the more expensive restaurants during lunch time later, to save some $. For "2nd dinner" we stopped at a cafe next door and got a baby spinach - blue cheese muffin, and a pear, raisin, 5 spice, poppyseed, "oatie" (oatmeal cobblerish bar) with yogurt. Wonderful!
We walked back across town along the sea, and made our way to Caroline Street, where I giant robot spider stood guard. I immediately thought of WETA studios. Turns out, they made it...
Mmmm... Kebab wraps with ginger soda. Then a unique muffin and "oatie" at the cafe next door...
After walking back to our hotel, Wendy got 2 loads of laundry going, and I started researching LOTR tours from Wellington. Planning to hit up the Weta Studios interactive exhibit tomorrow, as well as the Te Papa museum.
It smells like wet wool in our hotel room, as our clothes hang about all over the room. Plus Matt's socks still smell like stinky feet after going through the wash twice (contributed by Wendy). This 3 day stay in Wellington, will be relaxing, vacation-like. Wendy is planning the food itinerary.