Lower Hutt - Picton

Trip Start Nov 04, 2007
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Trip End Dec 06, 2007


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Friday, November 23, 2007

Finding a parking spot in a capital city near enough to the High Commission office can be tricky at the best of times. Doing it in a hotel on wheels even harder. In the end, we parked in a residents zone and went into the High Commission separately. We should have just done what the obviously very important woman did, which was to double park in the Commission driveway and barge straight in to vote. Live and learn.
Voting complete at 11am, and two hours to kill, we decided to head over to Te Papa museum to entertain the girls. The problem was that Yasmin had decided to be contrary today and up was down, black was white, wearing jumper was refused then requested. Screaming and carrying on and not much museum experience was had. Oh we did eventually.
After the museum, we had 10 minutes to get to the ferry. Or so we thought. Actually we had thirty seconds. This was when we decided to drive in the opposite direction to the ferry and head through a tunnel away from it. Doing a U-turn in the truck is no easy feat, but we managed it across a busy Wellington street - there is a high incentive to get it right when there is a truck bearing down on you. A real one. Not one of those hotel styles.
Only twenty minutes late for the ferry, they kept us waiting for another thirty minutes in the queue, in which time we twice lost our vehicle ticket in the Wellington "breeze". When we eventually boarded, we were conveniently stationed next to the Formaldehyde truck (for easy reference), and had just parked when the ferry pulled out of port. We weren't even out of the truck yet: that's efficiency.
The journey was full of excitement, with everything one tenth the size (including the poverty-stricken play area). Keeping the kids entertained was a bit of a challenge in this environment. But we succeeded.
Once in Picton, we settled in for the night, but of course we had to have the compulsory swim in the pool and jump on the trampoline.  Great playgrounds of New Zealand.
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