New Zealand: Day 6

Day 6 (Thur. April 28^th)

On Thursday, Camille and I woke up early and again and headed to the airport to catch our flight to Wellington.  Auckland is toward the north part of the North Island – Wellington is the southernmost city on the North Island, and also the capitol.  It was a very quick flight (only about an hour) and a quick shuttle ride from the airport to our hostel.  Right from the start, I LOVED Wellington!  It was such a quaint, quirky, unique city.  It is contained by the coast to the South and rugged mountains to the North – everything is close.  It’s like a party… if the room is too big, you lose the party atmosphere… when things are tight and contained, the energy and excitement is much more concentrated.  It was perfect - I loved it!  Once we put our things down at the hostel, we wandered around to find some lunch and ended up finding Cuba St.  This street was the bohemian central of the city.  There were a lot of cool pubs, unique shops, street performers, and just plain weird people wandering around.  It was fun!  We got some lunch and then decided to ride the cable car up the hill to the Botanic Gardens.  Wellington is a lot like San Francisco – a VERY hilly, coastal city.  The cable car was cool, though – it was like a tram straight up the side of the hill.  Once we got to the top, we just wandered through the Botanic Gardens.  They were beautiful even though they were past their prime summer season.  The trees were SO impressive and unique!  Out of all the Royal Botanic Gardens I’ve seen since coming to Australia, they were my favorite.  After the botanic gardens, we came back down the hill to the waterfront and just sat and sipped coffee for a while before going back to the hostel to claim our free “meal” for dinner.  We gave them our vouchers and were given a VERY small portion of a rice dish.  It was delicious, but definitely did not satisfy our hunger from the day.  So, after devouring that, Camille and I found an Irish pub and had a real meal for dinner.  Then we made our way to the Te Papa museum (the new Zealand national museum) and explored the exhibits.  It was SUCH a good museum.  I was really impressed.  They had a really cool exhibit on the Maori culture – super interesting.  On our way back to the hostel, Camille and I stopped at McDonalds for a milkshake and then attempted sleep despite our rooms being right above the hostel bar and the dance party they were apparently having that night.  Regardless of the noise pollution, we both fell asleep very fast!  It was a busy week and we were tiredJ.