Wellington - without photos!!!!
Trip Start
May 07, 2008
1
58
90
Trip End
Jan 06, 2009
Wellington,
North Island,
New Zealand
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
Well, we got to Wellington ferryport and we collected our bags from the carousel and on collecting our car, we nearly got blown off our feet. The wind was soooo ferocious!
Wellington is a gorgeous little city. It was named after the first Duke of Wellington, Arthur Wellesley. Wellington is also where Parliament is and all the political offices are. But don't let that put you off! It is also a hive of all things cultural with a big arts scene. Poetry readings, dance schools, literature evenings in cafes, galleries, live bands. It's a very cosmopolitan city with individuality and creativeness. And of course the architecture is also very beautiful. A mix of colonial, Victorian, Edwardian and modern. Gorgeous place.
After arriving and after driving through a bus-only tunnel and getting ticked off by a bus driver for doing so, we checked into our very central hotel and decided we really needed to get our laptop seen to. It had been out of action for quite a while and we were so behind on our blogs. We looked in the yellow pages, found a man, David had a chat to him, he came round to the hotel and took our laptop away with him until the next day. Gordon was a lovely man, seemed to know what he was talking about and said he would fix it for us. We were incredibly lucky. (David: The clues were that he didn't want to change the motherboard, hard drive, screen or any other rubbish. He accurately assessed that a re-install of windows was needed.)
That night, while our laptop was in laptop hospital, we went out for dinner. The Brothers Burritos was a local Mexican near our hotel. It was highly recommended in Lonely Planet and the place was heaving, we had to wait 30mins for a table. Good signs. I love my food hot so I ordered some taco thing (David: It was a Quesadilla.) and asked for it to be extra spicy please. David had some taco thing too but just had it as it came. (David: It was a burrito.) My taco was absolutely delicious and then suddenly...I looked like I'd had botox on my lips and my tongue was now twice the size. It was so hot I couldn't speak. Sipping my G & T was no good. I had no bread. I couldn't eat anymore. It was a burning hell of taco fire. David finished them off for me with a "I'm sure they're not that hot!" and sure enough after several minutes, David's eyes welled up, he started sweating, panting and was now the colour of a ripened vine tomato. Very funny.
The next morning, we went off and wandered around the city centre while we waited for Gordon to return with our sick laptop. Wellington city centre is much like any other city centre - an abundance of shops, cafes, bars, cars everywhere and students. It wasn't anything remarkable or out of the ordinary, just another city centre. We missed the silence of the countryside.
We met Gordon at the Hotel. He had duly fixed our laptop. Hurrah! Blogs back on track!! Gordon was fantastic - friendly and efficient. (David: He had taken an image of our C drive, formatted it and re-installed windows, found a driver for everything and put some protection software on there. Then he'd put all our stuff back on. He'd also put some office tools on there and a great picture viewer to enable us to continue with the blogs. I know how long all that takes and I hadn't phoned him until 4pm the previous evening. So, he'd worked throughout the night to get our honeymoon back on track. So, if you're in Wellington and you need some help with a computer you could do a lot worse than contacting Gordon at www.pcwiz2u.com).
So, back into the car, back onto the road for our next destination: Hawera and a massive volcano.
Love, us xxxxxxxxx
