The capital city of New Zealand is a funny little place. In England, at the weekend, the cafés and bars are alive with people enjoying having a few days off from work. Here it’s the opposite. The other night we decided that we quite fancied going out for a drink, we’d eaten well during the day so was just after somewhere to maybe have an anti pasta kind of dish. Everywhere was dead! It was like a ghost town walking around the city, our hotel bar that online boasted that it was a cool place to be didn’t open up at all over the weekend.
We settled into this quite funky little place and started to make our way through a few glasses of wine. It was a cool place, lots of big armchairs, open fires, fairy lights and the remains of peanuts of the floor. Walking back to the hotel it seemed that the only places that were alive were the countless amounts of strip bars! I’m not even joking, we were walking down the Main Street with all the bars and restaurants and there were about 5 in the space of 20 metres.
Nursing a small hangover we got up the next day and headed over to the Wellington Zoo hoping that as it was the week and everyone would be working/at school it would be nice a quiet. We were right for the first hour or so. Walking around this very hilly zoo we found ourselves face to face with lemurs, sun bears, tigers, lions, all sort. Sometimes I get a bit iffy about zoos but not this one, it was lovely and the animals looked very happy with where they were. We positioned ourself well for the chimp talk at 12:30. We were the only ones there bar a few other people and we thought this was great! It’s like our own private zoo. That thought had gone by the next 5 minutes as we were then greeted by about 50 kids, ranging at a guess from year 2 to year 3. Watching the adults trying to control these kids was quite funny. It triggered me to think of the children of Hallow and compare them to these before me. When a little girl sat next to me getting banging her feet off the chair – very irritatingly, I had to fight the urge to be Miss Jackson and tell her to pack it in.
We had a lovely day out at the zoo and saw some beautiful animals. It was a nice way to finish off our time in Wellington for now we are picking up a car and starting our road trip of the North Island.
We’re spending the night at Lake Taupo tonight although we’re not driving direct. Heading between the mountains we’re going to drive to a city on the east coast called Napier, have some lunch and then head on to Taupo for a few nights. I’m sure there will be lots of photos to follow but for now, here are some from the last few days.
H x
Memories of a Dream 