My weekend in Wellington had a rough start that included me almost missing my flight. Thank god I have an extremely supportive and awesome sister who rushed me to the airport at 530 am when my flight left at 6. This was my first NZ domestic flight, which was...different than the States. I didn't have to show ID once to get on the airplane. I got to keep my shoes on as I went through security! I could take more than 3 oz of liquid in my carry-on! Overall, all very surprsing facts about the safest country ever.
When I got to Wellington I dropped my bags off at my hostel and walked to a cafe that I had found in my guidebook. I explored the city until 1, when I checked in to the hostel. So after breakfast I set out to the I-Site where I got a map of the city. It was sunny and chilly, but I knew the next day would be raining so I wanted to do as much outside as possible. I checked out the botanic gardens where I discovered the largest bee I've ever seen in my life (photo below). After the Botanic Garden tour I walked down and found the Beehive building. The Beehive building got its nickname from the fact that it looks like a beehive.
Of course the only view I could get of the building had construction going on.
Botanic Garden's rose garden.
I finally made it back to my hostel and crashed for a few hours. Later I met up with Jacob and went to dinner with some of his friends. It was really fun and nice to be with a group of people after exploring all day by myself. One thing I kept thinking was "wow this is a really cool place, I wish I was sharing this experience with someone." Interestingly enough, Jacob had a friend from Monmouth who was visiting. He was supposed to leave on a ferry the next morning, but all ferries had been cancelled because of the "weather bomb". What's a weather bomb? Apparently a flash storm was going to sweep through the North Island the next day. More on that later....
As some of you may know, this was my first hostel experience. It wasn't horrible, but it wasn't my favorite place in the world. I blame my mom for spoiling with all of those nice hotels we would stay at when we would travel. I'm just glad that I arranged to stay in the all-girls floor.
So back to the bad weather, the next morning I woke up to dark skies and rain coming down. The "weather bomb" was completely overrated. I decided to go explore and find a place to have breakfast. It was so cold outside that I ran to the nearest cafe. After breakfast I went and bought an alarm clock just in case my phone didn't go off becauseI refused to get stuck in Wellington and I was feeling paranoid that I would. The wind was so strong during my walk I almost got knocked over. Not surprising since Wellington is called the windy city. Something tells me it would put Chicago to shame.
The rest of the afternoon was spent exploring the Te Papa museum with Jacob and Ross (Monmouth boy). We later went to The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, which I really enjoyed. For dinner we went to Sweet Mother's, which was AMAZING!! Hands down the best burrito I've had in NZ.
The next morning at 5am I left Wellington. It was werid because when I was looking for a taxi there were still tons of people out at the bars. Of course I know bars here stay open late, but it was weird to wake up and immediately be exposed to people at bars... My taxi driver had an East African accent and really wanted to have a discussion with me. All before I had a coffee.
The biggest bee I've ever seen, it was so huge I had to get a photo
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