Heading North
We've done our time on South Island, and got
up at 6am this morning to catch the ferry to the North Island. This
weekend is the end of the summer holidays so the ferry was split between
Kiwis ending their holidays, and international tourists in the middle
of theirs. The crossing took 3 and a half hours, but after lots of practice
with long car journeys, it seemed to go in a flash! No sooner had we
driven on in Picton than we were driving off in Wellington – to a cold
wind and light drizzle.
We'd
booked our hostel ahead, the Wildlife
House, which is a 5 storey tower block, painted with huge zebra
stripes. Once we were inside all pretence at themes had gone out the
window, and it was just another big, city hostel. But it was clean,
had a huge kitchen/lounge, and free internet access. So we were able
to catch up with most of our emails, while the girls played on the CBeebies
website. We're not keen on staying in city hostels, because they are
always much bigger, and seem more cramped than hostels in the countryside.
Perhaps its just the absence of green space around them, but whatever
it is, we all feel better when we're away from the cities – in north
America, Australia and here in New Zealand.
In
the evening we went out for an Indian meal – we just needed a break
from cooking for ourselves! We decided that we'd earned a night out,
and also that it was good practice for our Asian diet (I know, that's
a pathetic excuse, and besides we're not going to India, but we needed
to justify it to ourselves somehow!). Its only two weeks now until we
fly to Singapore, so we're starting to get hunger pangs for every type
of Asian food. But, ask the girls and they'll tell you the best bit
was going into the kitchen to look inside the Tandoor oven. Although
we're not even in Asia yet, we've started to learn new things about
it (in all the times I've eaten in Indian restaurants in Britain, I've
never once seen a tandoor, let alone had the kids-tour of the kitchen).
And, boy was the curry good. We're going to have to put "curries" somewhere
onto our list of 'What we have missed most about home".
We'd
booked our hostel ahead, the Wildlife
House, which is a 5 storey tower block, painted with huge zebra
stripes. Once we were inside all pretence at themes had gone out the
window, and it was just another big, city hostel. But it was clean,
had a huge kitchen/lounge, and free internet access. So we were able
to catch up with most of our emails, while the girls played on the CBeebies
website. We're not keen on staying in city hostels, because they are
always much bigger, and seem more cramped than hostels in the countryside.
Perhaps its just the absence of green space around them, but whatever
it is, we all feel better when we're away from the cities – in north
America, Australia and here in New Zealand.In
the evening we went out for an Indian meal – we just needed a break
from cooking for ourselves! We decided that we'd earned a night out,
and also that it was good practice for our Asian diet (I know, that's
a pathetic excuse, and besides we're not going to India, but we needed
to justify it to ourselves somehow!). Its only two weeks now until we
fly to Singapore, so we're starting to get hunger pangs for every type
of Asian food. But, ask the girls and they'll tell you the best bit
was going into the kitchen to look inside the Tandoor oven. Although
we're not even in Asia yet, we've started to learn new things about
it (in all the times I've eaten in Indian restaurants in Britain, I've
never once seen a tandoor, let alone had the kids-tour of the kitchen).
And, boy was the curry good. We're going to have to put "curries" somewhere
onto our list of 'What we have missed most about home".