We stopped at Palmerston North to check out its famous Square and for Matt's second coffee break, which believe it or not, was his second cup of Starbucks coffee.
After this quick stop, we found our way to the coast, stopping at Paekakariki to get our first glimpse at the beach and some old steam engine trains.
We left our mark in the sand at Paekakariki and moved on towards Wellington.
Matt navigated our way through the narrow streets to stop near our hostel, Wellywood Backpackers. It wasn't hard to find our hostel because it was the one painted to look like a zebra among the other high risers in the heart of the city. Of course, this wasn't the only interesting building in town as it competed with those in the Parliament District.
The famous building there is the Beehive, government offices for the Parliament. When we entered, Parliament was in session, so Matt and I sat in the public gallery to watch the question and answer part. We took this ancient elevator down to the ground floor to grab our things and drove over to the Botanical Garden.
We took a quick hike up to the conservatory that I thought would give us a good view of the city, but trees just blocked views of the bay. Due to poor planning on my behalf, Matt and I were too malnourished to find our way back to our car. I didn't account for our nutrition needs while planning this trip because it was already hard enough to pick and choose the things to do and sights to see, eating would just take time away from all the fun :op Eventually, a kind lady pointed us in the right direction and we headed to the airport to drop of our rental car.
And again, low blood sugar levels wasn't helpful as I gave Matt wrong directions to get to the airport. But we get there, drop off the car and take a shuttle back to the city center. Wellington reminds us a lot of San Francisco.
When we get back, we grab dinner at a local brewery, Mac's, before seeing the exhibits in Te Papa. Being a girl, my beer ended up being cheaper than Matt's, by $0.20, and I was the one to get free coasters. The museum is huge with five floors of Maori art and works on New Zealand history. We got to learn a lot about the tribal culture and see some interesting art.
We dropped by our hostel to check emails before hitting the town. We bought tickets from the receptionist who said that there was going to be this 'huge' party down the street and that 'Thursday' night was going to be busy, so be better head out before the bars got packed. That was a loud of bollocks.
First, the club wasn't opened until 10pm, which got us completely confused because the tickets said 'VIP entry up to 10' and in kiwi that means starting at 10. So we turned around to check out 'minibar' that seemed to be popping with younger folks hanging out in the front. The great thing about bars in New Zealand is that they stay open til 6am :o) We soon discovered the local favorite drink, a concoction of midori, Kahlua, and bailey's and made great friends with this guy named Peter.
Peter is quite the drunk riot who started chatting with us by asking where we were from. We told him California, but he kept insisting that we were from Canada and proceeded to belt the Canadian National Anthem ('Oh Canada! Oh Canada....'). He also shared examples of what to say while you're at a rugby game, what the bar scene is really like on a Friday night, and left us with a story about a bus full of foreigners. And of course, we couldn't leave him until we promised him that we would go back to the States telling everyone that kiwis know how to drink.
We took one last attempt to see if the club, Maya, was opened, only to meet a bouncer who just shook his head is dismay as to how lame the turnout has been. But since there was promise for free drinks, we walked in to a bare room with bartenders dressed in silly costumes. And that was how we ended our night in Wellington.
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