A long drive today, not helped by a 10 mile detour due to roadworks that took us over some mountains and then back again, followed by a gorge being blocked giving us a further detour.
So after 5 hours driving we finally arrived into a gloriously sunny Wellington and found our Hotel which was very central in the CBD.
After getting annoyed with a party of Germans checking in at the same time as us and also the fact that Karens Driving Licence that Neil had posted had not arrived, we decided to walk to the cable car (we would call it a funicular railway). This took about 15 minutes and we bought our tickets. The journey took about 3 minutes up the steep incline. It was OK, the best bits being where it went through a couple of tunnels, they had lit them up like the tunnel of lights in Norwich (except not as good!).
The view from the top was very good. Before feeding Karens caffeine habit we though we would walk around the summit and then have a look at the Botanical Gardens (especially as they were free!). To be honest they were pretty but nothing special. We were more impressed with the Agapanthus again (which the sign said a lot of people consider as weeds) and the fact that a significant fault line ran down the edge of the gardens.
We hiked back up to the cafe at the summit which had closed at 4pm. Why? – there were still loads of people about, the weather was glorious and we were not the only ones looking for refreshments. So we got back on the cable car and walked on for a few minutes to find our first Starbucks for a few days.
On the way back to the hotel we purchased some more fruit and some rolls for our lunch tomorrow.
After a quick panic when I couldn’t find where I had packed the camera battery charger for a while (in with my hair clippers – of course), we set off for the Old Bailey Pub for food – which was just past the Parliament Building.
Upon arriving they had just started a Pub quiz. After the previous nights fun we quickly decided to enter. This time we had just missed the first round. We realised we had scored the most on the second round (and he had given us the same points for the round we had missed). We were smug as all the other teams had 6 or more people. After that though we soon came back to reality with a bump. The next round on Psychology we found hard and it got worse until the last round where we managed 0/10! Unsurprisingly we came last (but by only 1 point and we didn’t play our joker). They give a prize to whoever came second last (to stop people giving up completely and just deliberately going for the wooden spoon). We were so close to winning a NZ gnome!
