Activity Summary
Saturday 24th December - Day 114 (continued)
Drive to Wellington
Attempt at making some fancier food
Evening stroll around the city
Sunday 25th December - Day 115
Christmas day in sunny Wellington!
Beach beers, ciders & xmas burger
Monday 26th December - Day 116
Museum of New Zealand
Weta workshop
Botanical gardens
Beers on the waterfront harbour
Tuesday 27th December - Day 117
Killing time before ferry
Parliament buildings
Mount Victoria lookout & The way of the Nazgul
Coastal driving around East Wellington bays
Interislander ferry
Summary
Wellington
It was a nice city but apparently it is hella windy and this means it's usually pretty cold. Seems we had timed it well but means it isn’t a place Nicola could live going forward.
As with most cities, there isn’t a whole lot to do that you can’t get elsewhere and would be more enjoyable if we were able to splash the cash and go drinking / eating out.
Accommodation
Wellington - Nomads
Number of nights - 3
Price per night per person - £28
Pricey place but we had no choice really around Christmas and in a larger city. We booked it thinking it would be nicer than it was however - the kitchen was an absolute let down; terrible facilities and looked like it never got cleaned. The upgrade to a private room with ensuite however made up for it.
Diary
[Continued]
The drive to Wellington was completely uneventful.
Once at the hostel, Nicola pulled out one the savviest moments of her savvy repertoire in preplanning and understanding the minefield that is parking in cities in New Zealand. The hostel was right on the main road with a number of bays that were permanent pay and display so were incredibly convenient for us offloading and loading all our gear but risk being very pricey over an extended period. Nicola however came armed with the knowledge that these bays were in fact free over bank holidays and that by the time we arrived we would only need to pay for a few hours until outside the charging time and then the extended xmas free to park period would carry us right until we left. When Luke & Tommy had to drive to the black hole of parking that is south London, it was Nicola they went crying to for help and results. The goddess strikes again and Chopper didn’t move at all until our last day here.
We checked into the hostel and were immediately outraged when we found out that the hostel was dry. Bit of a downer considering it was Christmas day tomorrow and that Luke would have one of his beautiful bottles of wine he’d purchased confiscated if caught. Our room however was upgraded to a private ensuite so that anger quickly dissipated, especially with the comfort of a king size bed rather than an airbed & tent. The kiwi tours group were less enthused when they arrived in their dorm room and the toilets on the floor were out of service.
Our xmas eve treat planned for ourselves was a slightly fancier & stuff our faces full kind of meal which mainly consisted of red wine honey chorizo, garlic bread & camembert. What we failed to take into account was that the hostel could be without an oven and was easily overlooked as our campsites always had one.
Sadly this nomads hostel kitchen was awful and we had a bit of a problem. Luke did his best to cook the camembert and garlic bread using pans, but it was incredibly difficult given the lack of oven and the terrible facilities exacerbated the challenge further. The garlic bread was pretty crisp on the base and the camembert curdled so it was all round a properly disappointing meal. To top it off, the chorizo we bought sucked as well.
To cheer ourselves up / stretch our legs we went for a walk around Wellington to get a feel for the place. It was pretty entertaining to be walking around a foreign city with absolutely no one around. An American family did manage to drag Nicola way off our desired path to take a picture of them as she has a hard time saying no.
When back at the hostel we went down to see whether there was any lively activity going on but there wasn’t so we turned tail and crashed out.
Merry New Zealand / Wellington Christmas!
It was a lovely nice sunny day which would go a long way for us celebrating on the beach with our half assed BBQ. Apparently this is odd for Wellington however, which is usually super windy and not overly warm. Result.
Our meal plan for the beach was as close as we could get to some form of an xmas day meal roll; chicken, pigs in blankets, stuffing and cranberry sauce. This however was a lot of food to make on the beach, so Luke began the process in the morning by wrapping bacon around sausages (as we couldn’t find pigs in blankets) and then spent an age trying to cook these again with great difficulty. We did however have some nice conversations with various solo backpackers that came in and out of the hostel kitchen, while also making a pretty late slap up eggs breakfast.
Eventually we were ready to head to the beach sometime around midday so armed with a portable stove, food & beers (Luke) / ciders (Nicola) we took off to Oriental Bay.
Most of the people at the beach turned out to be young families so we found a spot and cracked open the tinnies on the sly, as it’s illegal to drink alcohol in public places. We did very little but chill, drink, swim out to the pontoon & relax. The pontoon had an xmas tree so when we felt brave we swam out in the incredibly cold & jellyfish ridden sea (there were thousands of these tiny things) only for Nicola to get sea sick within seconds of getting there and bailing back to the safety of the beach.
At some point during our afternoon Luke fired up the stove and got cooking. It all worked out incredibly well and they were actually delish. A little girl came over and got very confused about what a pigs in blanket was.
We got talking to another couple on the beach for a while and then when the booze ran out with the sun starting to hide behind clouds a bit more we took off back to the hostel. It was a fun xmas day on the beach and in the sun but it was all pretty odd and we agreed that home life Christmas’ are a lot better.
On the walk back Luke was in hysterics at the sight of Nicola carrying the stove and was likened to Kwasi Kwarteng and his budget of doom. So he had a great chuckle (while slightly drunk) over Kamikwasi Nicola and her gas stove box.
Back at the hostel we stuffed out on some seriously bad New Zealand cheese (again another failed attempt at xmas luxury for us) and socialised with a group of people knocking around drinking wine before the hostel staff shut it down. One of the more interesting moments came when the police came into the hostel to kick out an incredibly large and smelly individual. Turns out he had paid for the previous night but refused to do so again. Obviously we all watched in interest and also relief once he was booted because he honestly smelt so bad he would clear rooms. Luke went into the lift after he came down the day before and almost wretched. Heaven help the people who stayed in his room the day before.
Boxing day in Wellington was very much like the UK. Sales were now on and the city appeared to have returned to normality.
The main activity for our day was the Weta workshop in the afternoon so before this we went to the Museum of New Zealand which was far grander than we expected it to be. With over 5 floors of exhibitions we only had time to do a couple of them before taking off, so we limited ourselves to the nature and culture floor. It was so impressive.
We got a daily bus pass for the city for $5 and made our way over to the Weta workshop / cave. We had a quick browse in the shop beforehand and posed with some of the trolls before starting the guided tour.
The tour was ok. The workshop and the people that work there are incredible at what they do, creating movie props from concept to reality and the detail on these is breathtaking. We enjoyed the first half of the tour & especially the LOTR elements but the second half of walking around the Thunderbirds miniatures set was quite dull. It felt like it dragged somewhat and the large tour group with some particularly vocal people was quite annoying.
Once done we took the bus over to the Botanical gardens, grabbed ice creams to pick up some rather low energy levels after being whittled down somewhat at Weta and had a walk around the park and down back into the city.
We had a bit of time left once back in the city before the museum closed so we had a quick rush around some of the other exhibits we hadn’t seen. After our visit to Weta we knew they had done some works for the WW2 exhibit which were these huge sculptures of people and again the detail on these was insane.
With the last of the sun Luke grabbed a beer on the waterfront harbour before going back to the hostel and an assortment of leftovers. Cooking garlic bread on the hob is not the one.
In the morning we packed up and checked out of the hostel. We felt there was very little else to do in Wellington and our interislander ferry wasn't until 8pm so we had a lot of time to kill.
We went for a walk to the parliament buildings before heading back to the hostel and grabbing the car and driving over to Mount Victoria.
We spent some time at the lookout before walking around the tracks around the hill. The main point of interest was that the hobbit scene where they hid from the Nazgul was filmed here so after walking over to it and missing it, we decided to reshoot the scene ourselves. Naturally Nicola was cast as the ring crazed Nazgul and Luke the scared little hobbit fleeing.
The rest of the afternoon was spent driving around the Wellington coast and killing time.
When it was time we went over to the interislander ferry, queued for a little bit of time before boarding and getting comfy in one of the nicer viewing platforms at the rear of the ship. However we really didn’t see much of the islands, especially the South Island Marlborough sounds as it was midnight by the time we got into Picton.
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