Wellington

We were a tad lazy this morning and slept in only just managing to check out on time. Everywhere in New Zealand you have to check out by 10am whereas throughout Asia it was always midday. However, maybe it's good because it gets us up and out before 10 each morning. Palmerston North was an okay town with a couple of museums, one of them being a rugby museum. Unfortunately, that one cost quite a bit to visit so we stuck to the free ones to diverse ourselves in a cultural morning. The first museum was all about Maori culture which was quite interesting but neither of us were in the mood to read a load of information boards telling us all about it. I now think that you have to be in the right kind of mood to visit a museum. Next door was the art gallery but we'd been told that there was a National Geographic exhibition that was exceptionally good so we went to check it out. It was brilliant. The photographs taken by professionals were stunning and some of them had beautiful stories explaining how the photo came about. We spent a good length of time looking at them and reading a few before we hopped back in the car and drove on down to Wellington. 

Halfway down we stopped at a beach (we were driving down the coast although it was rather a boring road) called Otaki beach to eat lunch. It was far too windy so unfortunately we ate our sandwiches in the car but at least we could hear the sound of the sea and watch the waves crash about. Then it was another hour or so down to Wellington which we arrived in quite quickly. I guess that just shows how small a city it is. There was a tricky one way system that I managed to guide Matt through to a hostel that we knew was pretty cheap and had a car park. Turns out the car park cost $10 a night so we decided it was time to say goodbye to the car. After booking a couple of beds at the hostel we drove to the car hire place in Wellington to give the car back. We were a day early but the nice guy at reception said he'd transfer the extra day we'd paid for to our south island car. I'm not sure if I mentioned this before but basically it costs over a hundred dollars to take a car on the ferry from north to south island so we saved ourselves money by hiring two different cars; we pick up the next one when we get to south island. Also, as we don't need transport in Wellington we decided to have a couple of days without it to, again, save money. It felt strange walking away, knowing we'd be carless for a couple of days. 

It was nearly 5pm when we got back into town (the car hire place was around 15 minutes walk out of the centre) so we decided to spend a good hour walking through the streets, seeing what Wellington was all about. The pedestrian Cuba street was probably the most interesting but not as lively as I thought it would be having read about it. Maybe on the weekends. We managed to source out a supermarket to buy some food for the next couple of days. 

Back at the hostel we cooked our tea in the small, very packed kitchen. Here is where I had a problem. The kitchen was pretty dirty and the people that were cooking in it had no regard for others. I think most people in this hostel were long term guests so maybe they were 'making themselves at home'. I just thought they were all rude. Also, it didn't help that our meal for tonight failed to excite me. The supermarket in Wellington isn't the cheapest (you have to drive further out to find the cheap places) so we'd ended up with pasta and tomato sauce and an aubergine which was the luxury. I should have cooked the aubergine for a little longer and it could have done with lots of grated cheese. I miss good food. 

We watched a bit of telly when we'd eaten tea but the hostel had no atmosphere and other people chose what they wanted to watch so we went and wrote blogs in bed. Maybe I'm just being fussy now but it's the worst hostel we've stayed in so far in New Zealand.