One week in Wellington

We enjoyed our last few days in Hamilton. Most of Wednesday was spent catching up with a few people, and then on Thursday we went out to Raglan for the day. We had a lovely time wandering around the cool little arty shops, then had a fish & chip lunch on the waterfront, washed down with L&P. It was a nice day, but hardly tropical, so we couldn't believe that kids were jumping off the bridge at this time of the year. As Will said, they breed them tough in NZ!

We then drove out to the surf beaches, although the surf was pretty non-existent. Pretty though...

On Thursday we drove down to Wellington. It was a bit grey & overcast compared to the previous few days, so we didn't get the nice views of the mountains on the way down that I hoped to. We had lunch in Taupo, then stopped in Bulls for ice cream & to stretch the legs. We arrived in Wellington at about 6pm & easily found our way to our accommodation. We are house-sitting a place in Newtown for around 3 months. It's a nice 3-bed 1920's era villa in a very convenient location. It is on a direct bus line to the University which is great for Will as it means he doesn't have to go via the city centre. The hospital is in Newtown so it is brilliant for public transport links. Below is the view from the front & back of our place. It's lovely at night with all the lights shining. We chilled out on the Saturday & had a wander around the Newtown High St. It's only about a 10 minute walk down the hill, however takes about 15 minutes to get home up the hill! Our place doesn't have Sky so we wandered down to the local sports bar to watch the All-Blacks game in the evening. On Sunday we started the house-hunting process. We looked through 6 open homes & it was really useful to give us an idea of the different suburbs, & what we can get for our money. We don't actually want to find our dream house JUST yet, as Will is still in the process of selling his house in the UK.

Will started his job at Victoria Uni on Monday & said that it is going well & everyone is really friendly. Whereas I am quite enjoying being a lady of leisure! In saying that, teaching jobs for next year are starting to be advertised, so I spent the early part of this week updating my CV & putting together a couple of applications. I've also been getting out & doing a bit of exploring on foot each day.

Today I did bit of a mammoth effort... I walked into the city centre via the waterfront which took about an hour and a half. It was a gorgeous day though, with lots of people out walking & jogging along the waterfront, or throwing rugby balls around on the beach.

This is a sign you probably won't see in many other capital cities around the world!

Once I was in the city centre I had bit of a wander around. I found a Warehouse so bought the box-set of season 3 of 24. We had watched season 1 & 2 on box-set in the UK, & the TV in this place only has rabbit ears, & only seems to pick up channels one, two and four, so this will give us something to watch in the evenings! Season 4 was also cheap, so I got it as well... I then started walking with the intention of catching a bus home, however I hit the Basin Reserve & realised I really wasn't that far away, so decided to walk all the way. It only took about 30 minutes to get home which is pretty impressive.

On Saturday Will & I will probably bus into the city centre & do a bit of exploring together. Saturday night we are off to the Cake-Tin to watch the All-Blacks take on Oz. Lets hope they play like they did in the last 20 minutes against the Boks, & not the first 60... Sunday promises to be another busy day of open-home viewing.