Road to the Russian - Day 2

So tired but excited, we set out for the last hour or so leg of our journey to Wellington. A quick pit stop to make coffee on the side of the road was necessary, but other then that the time passed quickly.

Note that I am stirring witha  can opener. We were in too much of a hurry to pull out the utensils.

We arrived, met up with Paul, and switched tanks. He was also kind enough to give us a cup of REAL coffee cause the instant Malaysian stuff Sonny bought just didn't have enough caffeine. Eventually though, we said googbye and headed back to the downtown where we would meet up with our friend Sarah who also happened to be visiting Wellington. On the way though, we passed through a suburb called Brooklyn, which had a large park called Central Park. Sonny and I giggled.

Even the building is cool

Anyways, Sarah said she was at Te Papa, which is the national museum of New Zealand and has all kinds of stuff, but best of all is FREE! So we parked and went inside and met up with Sarah near the huge tank of formalin.

Sarah!

A huge tank of formalin containing a colossal squid that is. Sarah was all amazed and in aw. I was not. You see, my former roomie and forever bestie Becca wrestled with far larger dead squids, and as I got to assist her a few times, I had seen far mor impressive dead squids. Though seeing Dr. Steve O'Shea who I know as a lovable, brilliant, lunatic in an official government capacity was amusing.

The Colossal Dead Squid - found in Antartica

I did enjoy the other bits of the museum, for example the really modern art-esque marae and the whale skeleton. The giant digital map of New Zealand was also useful for seeing the big picture of our road trip.

After we finished with the museum we had splurged a bit and had lunch at a cuban restaurant I had seen on the drive in. Three cuban sandwiches and three cubanos later, we set out for the next item on the must-do Wellington list. The cable car!

 This cable car runs up a very steep hill to the Wellington Botanic Gardens. Its only $1.00 NZ to ride, so perfect for backpacking students like us. Lots of locals actually use it for transportion as well, such as students at Victoria University - they even had their own stop!

 Once we got to the top, Sonny insisted on getting a picture of the car so we sat around and waited for it to depart. It only took ten minutes. While we waited, Sarah and I climbed a tree we found. I must say though, the photo he got is pretty.

 We then spent a good while wandering around the botanical garden, enjoying all the sights to be seen - such as the rose garden, gorgeous trees, an Australian garden, the duck pond, and the greenhouse with orchids. The weather held out for part of it, but then it ended up starting to storm again. We had an "enjoyable" walk back to the car in the rain, with our jackets zipped up tight.

On the way back we passed by the New Zealand Parliament building, affectionately known as the Beehive. I'm sure you can't guess why.

Cold and hungry, we drove to the last thing on our Wellington short list - Mt Victoria! This very large hill or small mountain is located right in downtown Wellington. Nerdy LoTR folks may will be interested to know the paths on its side are where this was filmed...

But while we were there it looked more like this unfortunately...

COLD!

So we did the only smart thing and instead retreated to Fawkes where we cooked Kimchi ramen noodles and drank a few beers in the warmth of the van. It way more fun than it should have been me thinks. After we dropped Sarah off at her hostel and headed out of the city to a secret location to spend the night. More details to come!