Wellington, NZ
February 14, 2023 - February 16, 2023
We arrived safely in Wellington! On the drive, we did have to turn around at one point and take another route because of flooding. We are thankful that’s all we ran in to because the areas in Hawke’s Bay and south had a ton of flooding. Rivers were raging and very high compared to what they should be. Even until this day (writing this on February 22nd), Hawke’s Bay is still flooded, farms are destroyed, and people are still missing :(
While in Wellington, we did a lot of relaxing and working out. We stayed at Quest 256, which was a great little hotel in the middle of the city. Wellington is your basic big city - crowded, traffic, no parking, and people everywhere. We arrived here on Valentine’s Day, so after checking in and heading to the nearby gym for a workout and sauna session, we got ourselves all dolled up and headed to a restaurant to celebrate Valentine’s Day. The restaurant was a tapas type place, which is one of my favorites! They had a special going on - 5 margaritas for $50 NZD and it came on a tree-like display. We obviously couldn’t pass that up! The food was delicious, but the company was the best part :-D
The next day, we had to deal with my procrastination. I take thyroid medicine every day for my under-active thyroid. I tried getting a vacation override before leaving the states, so I would have enough medicine to last me until mid-May. That unfortunately didn’t happen, so I had to get a refill at some point here. Since Wellington is the capital and a big city, I figured this would be my best shot. Ben dropped me off at the urgent care at 8am when they opened. He unfortunately had to sit in the car and wait for me. I waited an hour and a half before seeing the doctor because they took all the sick and urgent patients before me, which is totally understandable! I see the doc, she apologizes that I had to pay $250 NZD to see her for 5 minutes to get the script, and off I go next door to get the prescription filled. I was happy to cross that off the list of things to do. One of these days I’ll learn not to procrastinate (as Ben shakes his head at me)!
The rest of the day was spent walking around the city, taking a ride on the Wellington Cable Car, and bar hopping for happy hour and dinner. We stopped in at Pop Gin, where an Irish guy was playing some tunes for everyone. Then we headed to a fun brewery, where we watched some poker on TV. We then stroll on over to The Puffin for a glass of wine before heading to dinner at a Mexican restaurant. After finishing our drinks at The Puffin, we head to the bathroom. I walk out before Ben and hang out there in the hallway. Ben comes rushing out of the bathroom and says “did you feel that?!!”. I look at him like what are you talking about and he continues to say how he thinks an earthquake just happened. I felt nothing. But as he says that, 3 people come rushing out of The Puffin like they were in a hurry. We all kind of look at each other and Ben asks one of the guys if he also felt that. He did and said it was definitely an earthquake. As we were walking from The Puffin to the Mexican restaurant, we hear people making comments about the earthquake, so Ben goes on Twitter to see what is being said on there. It was reported to be around a 6.0 magnitude earthquake in the Cook Strait, which was the waterway we were taking that next day on the ferry to go from the North Island to the South Island. Head over to Spotify to listen to our podcast about the ferry ride!
Wellington was our last stop on the North Island. We’ve spent 3 weeks exploring the island. Although we had a ton of rain, went through one local State of Emergency (Auckland), one Cyclone (Gabrielle), one national State of Emergency (all of the North Island), and an Earthquake, the North Island did not disappoint! The memories we both have together will forever be remembered, but we both were happy to say…”Peace out North Island and HELLO South Island”. Next stop…
BLENHEIM!
Oh and the picture of George Clooney is from the Nespresso shop that we stopped in at. I love my Nespresso machine at home, so I had to stop in the shop for a coffee tasting!
