Wellington

So with only 1 month left I’m trying to spend my last weeks well. I can’t believe time is going so fast. I still feel like I arrived last week and New Zealand is still a dream. On the other side this is my life now. I know my way around my city like I have been living here my whole life and I can’t think of going back. I have my routine here and I have all my other habits it’s just my home!

Anyway my Dutch friend Emma (who moved to Auckland 3 months ago to work as an au pair) came to visit me last week in Rotorua. We had met each other in Auckland last month and it was so weird seeing her after 9 months! It was so much fun so we decided to do another trip, this time to the capital of New Zealand; Wellington! The city is known for its bad weather, windy and rainy so basically Holland. It’s located on the very south of the North Island and from there people take the ferries down to the south island which takes more or less 4 hours. So Saturday we left Rotorua at 11.45 and we were supposed to arrive in Wellington at 18.30. But I don’t know what happened but our bus ride was so messy we ended up arriving in Wellington at 20.30! It seemed like we stopped every 10 minutes and then we had to change drivers or we had to stop because someone on the bus felt sick bla bla what a hassle. The bus was really full as well so we were all cosy. It was quite a nice town, you get to see other beautiful places. When we arrived in Wellington we had to take the train (!!!!) to the village where we were going to stay with family from Emma’s host family. It was a nice big old building where we took the train. It was the first time I had taken the train in New Zealand. Trains are special in this country because I’ve only seen them in Auckland and Wellington haha. It was dark when we got to the village and Wellington is built on hills so we had a long way up with our bags. Luckily an elder woman helped us to find our way. Houses in Wellington usually have their driveway on the road which go down. We had to take some stairs down to the house but there were 2 houses A and B and we didn’t really know which one was which. I got onto the balcony and I looked inside and saw a living room with people so I quickly made my way out there because that was not the house! Those people must’ve thought what the hell is she doing. Woops. Next to it was our house. We stood on the balcony and out of nowhere this big light got pointed at me, like cops always do sneaky, and I heard a voice ‘Are you alright???’ I thought somebody thought I was breaking in but then I remembered I was in New Zealand and that doesn’t happen and realised it was the lady from before. All good we finally arrived home at 21.30 and got our little to do list ready for the day after.

The first day we were so lucky with the weather! It’s known that I always take bad weather with me but Emma always takes good weather with her. So Sunday, 1st of June and also the first day of winter. We were walking around in our t-shirts in Wellington! I couldn’t believe it. Love this  Our bags were full with hats, gloves and hoodies but we didn’t even need them. We decided it was a nice day to visit the waterfront which we did. Lots of little organic café’s and people enjoying the weather. Also I see lots of random colourful painted pianos in cities here. Also there. So some people were playing the piano while we were eating our lunch. We are still poor teenagers so we decided to buy a packet of rice, eggs and falafel and that’s basically what we had for all our nights in Wellington. We also looked for all the free stuff to do in Wellington and luckily there were a lot of things for free and if they weren’t we could get a cheap student price. After the waterfront we went to the famous ‘Te Papa’ museum where they have the world’s largest squid in a tank, dead, to see. Disgustingly huge but impressive to see! It was maybe twice the size of me oh my god. And to think that was swimming in the Antarctic Ocean a few years ago makes me scared of what else there is to find. Other than that there were lots of other animals and skeletons to see. Hanging from the ceiling there was an enormous skeleton. We thought it was just decoration because it was too big to be true but nah it was a skeleton of a whale! It got killed in 1994 by some killer wales and then it ended up on shore or something like that but massive! I would say a good 40 meters. After that we walked through other parts of the museum and then went outside again. There were some street performers. After Te Papa we decided to do another activity that included having a good view over the city. The famous cable car. We followed the signs but we thought we knew where we were going (sure, after spending 3 hours in this city) and walked past some shops. We then stopped and checked and saw that we had walked to the other side of that part of town. So yes we had to walk back all the way. We had heard a lot of these famous cable cars that take you up to the botanical gardens that give you a great view of Wellington City. So excited we boarded the little cable car train. We had a good seat and got ready for the trip. We thought it was going to be a 20 minute ride looking over the city but after 2 minutes it stopped, we thought it was like a stop in between or something but no we had to get out. Well all that for this little journey haha. Getting out of the train we looked for the gardens but also they were not there. We expected to find big flower gardens and fountains but nope. There were a few look outs where we went and there was indeed a good view over the city harbour. Then we entered a shop where this man made his own perfume it smelled amazing. After spending some time there and making it worth going up there we took it back down. It was 17.00 so the sun was going down. It was getting colder so we decided to go shopping for a little bit. We then found a big tea shop called ‘T2’ where you could try out all these different kinds of chai. They were joining this ‘Chai project’. And we, being good Dutch represents, were cold poor and thirsty so we decided to go in and try out all the different tea flavours. After we warmed up a little we went to Lush and looked for some yummie creams for our hands. Hahah you get so creative when you don’t have money. We went back home after spending ages to find our way back to the train and were home around 9. My feet were so sore from all the walking so I didn’t get off the couch that night :D

The next day we had a good day again! We had already done a lot of the things on our to do list so we decided to just walk around a bit. You get to know the city way better just walking around. We went to the famous street called ‘Cuba Street’ it’s a street full with colourful café’s and shops and music. It’s probably one of the main streets in Wellington. We found a shop with a café in it and it was called ‘Amsterdam Coffeeshop’. We laughed because they probably didn’t know what a real coffeeshop in Amsterdam was. We looked for some spacecake but couldn’t find any haha! We were hungry and tired so we decided we had deserved a lunch. We heard ‘Courtenay Place’ was also one of the main streets so we wanted to go there. Again thinking that we knew where to go we started walking. We walked for maybe 20 minutes only to get back to the exact same spot we started!! So frustrated! We then got google maps on our phones and started walking again. We put the phone away and again we did another loop in the wrong direction. We were so tired and mad that we just walked straight and honestly in less than 100 meter we got to that street. It was there the whole time!!!! When we got to the street we forgot about everything, this street was heaving! This street was only dedicated to food! It was full of restaurants and café’s nothing else!!! I remembered reading that Wellington city has more restaurants and café’s than New York City measured on the concentration. That wasn’t hard to believe. We chose some Indian and sat outside. We noticed that this city had so many gothic people. Or just like people dressed in that kind of style or people with pink or green hair haha. Weird stuff. It was also the Queen’s birthday but it’s nowhere near the way we celebrate in Holland. We saw some people dressed up as cats or people wearing some flowery things but we didn’t know if that was their daily style or just for the queen haha. Also we finally found I <3 New Zealand t-shirts. As you know I collect those t-shirts and I hadn’t seen any in the 10 months that I’ve been here. Emma and I looked for them in Auckland but nope. Then we finally found one in Wellington in this hidden shop! Only to see that it was closed. We decided to write the address down and go back the day after because we were sure we wouldn’t have found it somewhere else. Because we didn’t do very much that day we discovered that Wellington had a Welly wood sign! So like the Hollywood sign but then with Wellington! It was near the airport so we took the bus there. Seriously the bus drivers here have no idea. We asked if there was a sign and they didn’t know they just guessed. We said that we thought it was near the airport so they said: oh yeah we stop somewhere there. We hopped on the bus and after 20 minutes we saw the sign in the distance. Excited we wanted to get out only to see it drove right past it. The closes bus stop to it was 10 minute walk so that’s what we did. By the time we got to the sign it was getting dark so we quickly took some photos. We then watched the city from the other side of the water. So beautiful with the sky being pink/purple/orange and the buildings getting darker and starting to lit up. We didn’t feel like walking back to the bus stop so we figured we would find one on the way back to town. We headed into that direction but got tired after 2 minutes so decided to sit down on some rocks looking over the water. Gorgeous view! The moon was shining in the shape of a nail and there were some stars coming out. There is just no way to describe them. The stars are so so so bright and big. You wouldn’t believe me if I would say it was a star because it looks like a huge plane. Then this random man came up and told us he really had to tell us something. He told us that the big light next to the moon was Jupiter! And on the other side there was a red-ish star which was Mars! And if we waited a little in between them we could see Saturn. So cool! He said that if we had binoculars we could see the rings around Saturn! He then said: watch this! And pointed at some really bright lights in the sky in front of us. There was a plane coming. The landing lanes were just 50 meters behind us. We watched some planes coming down and it was really cool to see these big planes coming down over the city! This night felt more like a summery night because it wasn’t cold at all. We decided to walk to nearest bus but we ended up walking all the way to the city. My god what a hike! It took us almost 2 hours, I swear I walked more than a marathon these few days. It was nice though because you saw the city from different perspectives. We got home late and knackered we ate our rice and falafel and egg of course.

On our last day in Wellington we decided to do the last things on our list. Including the Wellington Museum of Sea and City. It was rated one of the 50 best museums in the world! Also it was free haha. It was quite a cool museum because it had a lot of statues and the rooms were built in theme so lots of special effects and old stuff. There was a room and every single wall was covered in hundreds of little notes written by visitors. So every visitor had to write their story on the note and post it on the wall. Of course I did mine as well. I love to leave a piece of me in every city, just like I did on the post it wall in Auckland  After this we went to the Parliament where we did a tour (free also?!). We couldn’t believe that we were doing a tour etc. on our own without parents forcing us haha. It was such a fancy building and the guide told us that our prince, now king, had visited the parliament 5 years ago. We then got to a very interesting part of the building. The part where they explain how it was build. New Zealand gets a lot of earthquakes and they found this way to make buildings earthquake proof. So what they do is that under the building there’s an extra layer with these special iron disks. And to make a long story short. When there’s an earthquake obviously the ground moves from side to side but instead of the building moving and getting destroyed. That extra layer under it moves from side to side (it can move 30 cm each way) which leaves the building untouched. Amazing aye. It depends per building but some buildings are safe unto the force of a 10.0 earthquake magnitude. I think this one was around an 8.5 on the scale of Richter. Well that done we had basically done everything we wanted to. We decided to say goodbye to Wellington by having a drink at Starbucks, an ice cream at Movenpick (delicious Swiss ice cream with freshly made waffle cones), some Kumara chips at burgerfuel and again some tea from T2.

The day after I took the bus home at 8 in the morning and Emma took the plane back to Auckland. She text me at 10 saying she was home laying on her bed while I was just 2 hours into my trip. I was meant to arrive home at 16.50 but my bus was cancelled and I had to take another one but that included a trip around the whole north island trip, or at least it felt like that, so I arrived at 19.00. yay me. I did get to a nice country side of NZ though but I can dream the roads now! Tomorrow I have my, hopefully, last appointment at the hospital in Hamilton and Saturday I’m going to a kiwi encounter! So I can finally hold or feed a kiwi! My host sister, also Emma, left for her 2 year trip Monday. She’s also going to work in Holland for a few months close to Breda where I’m going to study so I’ll most likely catch up with her there! I have my school ball in 2 weeks and I’m stressing because I don’t have a dress or shoes or anything!!! Helpppppppppppppppp. Okay I feel like my last months are going to be very busy but awesome so for now I say, good day!