RTW Trip Preview – Wellington

Image above: A seal awakening from its slumber to look quizzically at me at Red Rocks on the south coast. [Monday 14 September]

Amazingly, it’s somehow already day 11 and I’m now at Auckland airport having spent a fantastic five days with Clara and her family in Wellington waiting for my flight to Lynn and her new family in Melbourne.

It’s been six years since Clara and Richard moved to New Zealand so it was a happy reunion seeing them again after all this time not to mention meeting their two kids for the first time as well: Tomas (four and half) and Nico (one and half).

Although the weather was temperamental for most of my stay I really enjoyed Wellington. It had this compact, boutique, San Franciscan feel (except windier!) with this emphasis on chic design, fabulous food, and friendly locals just wanting to chat with you. Plus, being able to hit the coast in a few minutes drive was awesome. I can definitely see myself moving here for a bit and enjoying the lifestyle.

Image above: Tomas getting totally stuck into his hash brown during lunch at the Southern Cross. [Saturday 12 September]

But the unexpected highlight was simply being part of Clara and Richard’s family both in helping to take care of and in playing with their two boys. Especially with Tomas who always was wanting to take photos with my camera.  And so much so that he would bounce into my room at 07:30 and made sure that I was awake so that he could curl up next to me and ask to see the photos. So cute and an extremely effective method of making sure that I really got up! :)

And one time Tomas came with me to visit Te Papa. It was just the two of us and instead of me exploring the exhibitions it was more of me trying to keep up with him as he dashed from display to display trying out all the interactive displays and bombarding me with a ton of questions. Simple ones like what’s a helmet for to really hard ones like what is electricity? (Answers for the last question on a postcard, please!)

So the whole visit was thoroughly enjoyable, a completely novel way of seeing a museum, but utterly exhausting by the time we got back home. Well for me at least … Tomas seemed to have boundless energy afterwards so I also ended up reading him two bedtime stories before his Dad put him to bed and I just crashed on the sofa!!!

Finally, my thanks to Clara and Richard for the relentless yet rewarding five day crash course in parenting … erm, I mean for all their hospitality! Hopefully, it won’t be another six years until we all meet again. :)

Latest Travel Ratio: 4 places visited, 26.5 hours sitting in a plane, 3 movies watched, and 5 airline meals eaten.