Quest Wellington

... I randomly offered 10 Singapore dollars (about £4) &#8211; which was amusingly accepted. <br><br>It was my turn to be amused when the teams were announced and that a certain Michael Bridges was playing for Newcastle. Bridges wasn&#8217;t great at his short spell at Bolton but had his career curtailed by some terrible injuries. Suffice to say, that he hasn&#8217;t improved! Does it come much worse than being jeered by Wellington ...

... or 'The National Museum' for a late lunch and, yippee, it's free again. The museum itself is massive - something like 4 football pitches of exhibition space - and there's no chance we can do it justice in an afternoon, but we still see some neat stuff. There's a hall dedicated to geology and tectonics, where we experience an earthquake aftershock from inside a house. There's a whole exhibition dedicated to a Colossal Squid that was fished from the Antarctic Ocean a few years ago and ...

... for mass anymore but can host events such as wedding. The place is beautiful, all carved in native woods inside. We reached the city centre to take the cable car back up the botanical gardens and grab the car. We drove up to Mt Victoria for the ultimate lookout of the city (very steep roads, could be in San Francisco!). After lunch, we headed towards the museum of tattoos. <br><br><br>By luck, we got to talk to the ...

We arrived in the capital of New Zealand late at night, so didn't get to do anything on our first day, other than check out the nearest bar. <br><br>Wellington is known as the windy capital, and by god they got the name right. It was bloody freezing! We spent two days exploring the city. To be honest there really wasn't much to see. It was just another city, without many shops ...

... small hike up to a lookout on the Sounds and it was unbelievable. Every where you looked was a 360 degree view of the surrounding area. NZ never ceases to amaze us.... its all just so beautiful and rustic. So many areas are untouched with barely any people around too. We spent a night in Picton before we caught the ferry over to the North Island, and stayed at the nicest hostel so far. The place was right ...

... of the weather and the fact that we were there in autumn. So we went back down again and headed for Te Papa. Te Papa comes highly recommended by just about anything and anyone talking about tourist-activities in Wellington. The list of suggested activities hanging on the wall at our hostel in Wellington even listed it twice because "It really is THAT good". And after having been there we have to agree :) (Well, not really about the 'going there twice'-bit, but it should definitely be ...

DAY 12 and 13 We didn't need to leave for our trip to Doubtful Sound until 11.30pm so this gave us a chance to explore Te Anau a bit more. It's a town/village built for tourism as apart from the trips to Doubtful and, more commonly, Milford Sound, Te Anau is the starting point for a lot of serious walks, or tramps, as the Kiwi's call them. So every other shop is a restaurant, while the rest are tourist offices selling various ...

... up about 6am just as the sun was starting to come up so I got up and took a few photos. Woke up properly then at about 8am and got up and had a shower. It was a very quick shower as the water was cool because the engine hadn't been on during the night, which heats up the water, It all added to the experience though and I don't really take long showers at the best of times anyway. We had bacon and egg cooked on the barbeque on an English muffin, which was just ...

... with wings....and it was....a huge jurasic park beatle with wings...made the cochroach with wings in Fiji look dainty. So, Kris had to save the day again by "herding" the large creature out of our room. I've just realized that I will likely rank each country we visit by the insects we encounter. Anyway, enough of that....otherwise, the place was lovely, and we met some really interesting people, as you can imagine, at this place. One in particular was a late 50 ...

... Solo cups and Hershey's chocolate<br>We tried to make smores, but NZ didn't have graham crackers, so made them with these cookie things. They were dubbed "Smooters"<br>Ate cheese and avacado sandwiches a lot<br>Had some really good fruit that I always forget the name of. Its feijoa. Sooo good. <br>Got green-lipped New Zealand mussels from the grocery store. Delicious and cheap :)<br>Rode a cable car<br>Went to a garden<br>Chelsea ...