Thursday, November 17, 2011

NZ's Capital


We had a nice leisurely day in Wellington today. After sleeping in, we had good intentions to head straight down to the iSite to do some South Island planning. However, minutes stepping out of our hotel, we were distracted by an outdoor clothing clearance sale followed by a bookstore where we spent some time looking at their Bali Lonely Planet guidebook.

Because Christmas holiday is coming up, it's actually kind of difficult traveling by the seat of your pants because we have to consider how many weeks we'll need in NZ, then how long to spend in Australia, and finally, how to go about traveling around Bali so that we know where to book a place during the holiday week where it supposedly fills up.

After eating at a downtown food court, we eventually made it to the iSite where we decided not to do another Lord of the Rings movie set tour since we didn't recognize most of the fictional locations listed in the brochures despite having just watched Fellowship of the Rings.

We strolled around the CBD window shopping while busy locals bustled around us. We took the cable car up the hill mistakingly purchasing a round trip ticket as we would later walk back down the hill anyways.

At the top, there was a cable car museum about cable car history in Wellington. Very similar to San Francisco, except there they had a working cable system instead of a mockup.

The walk down the Botanical Gardens was nice. I should have worn more than just my t-shirt as the weather was windy and cool in the shade. Kind of like Canada, cooler than you'd expect.

At the base, we made it just in time for the last Parliament Building tour of the day. This was actually well worth the hour visiting the Beehive and Parliament building, gaining a bit of history about NZ, as well as its similar executive and legislative arms of government.



We had to walk back to our hotel because our parking ran out. Here it doesn't seem like you can buy parking for a full day which was quite annoying. We moved the car to the street where it was free until 8am the next morning, so we get to sleep in a little.

On the way back, we actually bought the Bali and Lombok Lonely Planet to do some planning. Here we experienced the high prices of books in the country. I remember that was the case in Australia too where books were so expensive, people set up book clubs and shared each other's books to make it more affordable. The Lonely Planet which was listed as $25 USD cost $50 NZ, about $40 CAD equivalent.

Which brings me to why things in Canada (and the US) cost so much less than goods anywhere else. Here, a soup at a restaurant would cost $8 CAD. Pop about $4, $3.5 for a can at the store. A whole roasted chicken at the supermarket was $9, a waterproof camera was $460 when BestBuy.ca listed it for $320. Gas is $1.70 a liter.

The things I found cheaper were hotels, about half the price of an equivalent in North America. Car rentals is probably less too at $28 a day, and when you work it out, cell phone plans would be better.

We had dinner at a place called Hog's Breath Cafe which had surprisingly good prime rib. I negotiated a 20% discount, as there was a coupon at iSite, but I neglected to take it because, who would have thought we'd go to this restaurant anyways?

While at the restaurant, I scored another deal booking a ferry to South Island. The famous Interislander was full, but there are actually two ferries that operate between Welling and Picton. The Bluebridge Ferry was having a promotion and cost $50 less with a student card.

After dinner, we watched Contagion, went back to our hotel, did a load of laundry, in an actual laundry machine this time, and then bed.

Reading about Bali actually got us both excited about Indonesia, which we were a bit hesitant about initially after hearing about the scams. We are also considering adding Philippines to the itinerary and perhaps abbreviating Thailand, since we've been there already.

In any case, looking forward to finishing Wellington tomorrow morning and seeing what's next in the South Island. The outdoor clothing store guy admitted that South Island hands down beats North for pretty much everything. 

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