FEW DAYS IN THE CAPITOL

Our Sunday morning started relatively early at 5.00AM as we jumped on an SUV driven by our generous German/Polish intern friend who swept us away to Christchurch International Airport. We had a quick chance to fix our caffeine levels just before our morning flight delivered us to the capitol of this wonderful country. As we arrived in Wellington just before 8.00AM the only thing in our mind was of course breakfast.

After requiring some sustenance we decided to ditch our bags to our hostel where we would stay for these few days and go about the city, which was only waking up for a new day. We decided that our simple plan for this small city-get-away would be to relax, to shop and to get to know the city so famous from its secondhand stores and variety of cafés. As we wondered around the quiet city streets it was invigorating to notice that both of us actually enjoyed Wellington so much more than Auckland, especially after the few weeks in "the country".

As Wellington woke-up for the new day and we with her, we noticed that this “big city” really had a homey “small city” feel to it. Cafés lurked practically everywhere, not that it would bother us in any way, and also outlets and secondhand shops were numerous. From few of them our fearless wonderers did some great finds although most of them were either too big or to fragile to stuff in the backpacks to be brought home. However during these roamings we also stumbled upon a lovely Sunday market held at the waterfront near our hostel which made us think home and the lovely markets on Laukontori.

Walking at the sunny waterfront gave us an idea. Lotta had been aching for seafood and Miia had never tried eating crab so come to evening we took our course towards the Crab Shack located in the Wellington waterfront. The meal, which consisted of total 1kg of crab meat, 0,5l of white wine, two small loaves of bread and two marvelous pieces of brain-meltingly delicious mud cake with ice cream, was a huge success and did not leave us hungry.

During the next few days we decided that this was definitely a city worth checking out so we hiked up yet another hill to Mt Victoria’s lookout to see the sunrise, visited the Te Papa- museum to get different perspective to the nature, history and culture of New Zealand and even went to the movies to satisfy our lust for much more contemporary art forms. We loved every second of this cozy city and were a bit sad to leave it behind so quickly. But new WWOOFing challenges awaited us up in Hamilton and the first of them was to endure a nine hour bus drive up there. No biggy for the travel-sized extreme hobbit Lotta but how will the long-limbed and lean though easily motion sick Miia survive the trip? Stay tuned…

With Love Miia & Lotta