Winding it up in Wellington

We wrapped up our time in New Zealand in the capital city of Wellington at the southern tip of the Northern Island. After our long bus ride from Tūrangi we were really exhausted and then realized that we were also sick with some stomach bug. We ended up needing about three days to fully recover (mostly Traci) and so we didn’t do as much in Wellington as we had originally planned, though we did get out and about a bit and did get to do some hiking and saw a couple of the spots where they filmed scenes from Lord of the Rings which TOTALLY made Traci’s day :-)

Wellington is known as windy Wellington, though we were very lucky while we were there and the weather was beautiful and breezy. We stayed in a really cute little apartment off of Aro street and met two more great Airbnb hosts who have one of the oldest (colonial) houses in Wellington. Our host Fiona gave us a tour and shared some really fun stories about her life in Wellington. She also baked us bread and cookies! Not all hosts do these things, but staying at Airbnbs is really a great way to get to know people and a town. If you visit Wellington, you must check out Cuba Street as it is a great food scene with lots of shops and interesting people. We both needed haircuts as well and found a great barbershop that catered to men and women. The guys who cut our hair were fun and did a great job! This is a very walkable city with access to downtown (CBD), Cuba street, the waterfront and lots of different museums and outdoor attractions including a cable car that you can ride up to get to an amazing outlook over the city.

Travel Tips

When eating out, here are some things that are broadly the same in NZ, but different from what we are accustomed to in the PNW:

• Tipping is not expected as people make a comfortable living wage

• Because people aren’t working for tips, you will have several different wait staff coming to your table - whoever is available to take care of delivering or picking up your food

• Often you will order and pay at the counter. Even at the fancier restaurants where they take your order at the table, you will go to the counter to get your check and pay

  
  

As we have been traveling, we have used our credit cards to pay for things which then gives us the most recent exchange rate. Also, we discovered a hack on Tik Tok that has been really helpful: on an Apple phone if you open the calculator and click on the calculator icon in the lower left corner you can turn on Convert. You now can see the exchange rate for currencies around the world - very cool.

This was our first meal out after I recovered and it was great pizza (not as good as CheZee Pizza in PDX obviously) with some really fun names. Mine was Greed and George’s was Purgatory. This is a chain in NZ and it’s great!

A beautiful purple wall of flowers that we walked past every day

Our first walk down by the waterfront.

New do!

Of course we wanted to do the City to Sea Hike in Wellington, but I was not up to completing the 9 miles, even across multiple days and so here are some pics from the section that we did at the beginning. It starts in the CBD (Central business district where you find a very old colonial cemetery and then winds you through the city and some wooded parks that make you feel that you are completely in the wilderness. Some if these trails are very long and heavily wooded, though we saw several single women using them which indicates a level of safety that I don’t always feel in the states.

The beginning of the City to Sea Walkway

Place of Peace - this is close to the Botanical Gardens

We hiked up here as part of the City to Sea and found a nice spot for lunch. If you don’t want to hike, you can catch the cable car from the CBD.

This sun dial is close to the top of the cable car and was so cool. We were here at 12:58!

In the woods on the hike

I love these giant fern trees!

There were several places where we saw support for Palestinian people.

These are photos from our hike up Mt. Victoria. This isn’t a terribly challenging hike and it’s much shorter than we thought it would be. I was still pretty wiped out, but the best part (for me) was finding places where they filed LOTR! There were tours coming through, but it was fun to find them ourselves.

I’ve never seen a mushroom like this - seems Alice in Wonderlandy

Woo Hoo!

This is the spot where the hobbits hid from the Nazgûl. It looks VERY different from the movie after years of tour groups and crazy fans like myself coming through.

I love this quote and the sense of adventure and bravery that it encompasses

Just proof that I was here :-)

According to Google Maps, this is The Way of Nazgûl but we didn’t find any signage

This slide is close to the top of Mt. Victoria. There is a tree just past the end of it, so George only pretended to slide down…because I begged him to :-)

The view from the top is amazing! It’s a 360 degree view of the harbor, airport and city

And since we are feeling better, we treat ourselves to gelato when we are done!

This was our last little walk close to where we stayed. Our host told us about it and shared that this entrance used to be a garbage dump until a local woman (many years ago) started planting seedlings to improve the area. Someone reported her nefarious activity to the city and when they came to investigate, they offered to send others to help. Now it is a lovely and welcoming entrance to a hike through the forest.

Found in the woods

Majestic tall pines

And we end with dessert. In the morning we will catch our Uber to the airport at 3:30 am!