After dinner, we took a short walk along Oriental Bay past the Freyberg Swimming Pool, to the offshore fountain near Nicholson's Brasserie & Bar. The apparatus was a hundred yards from shore and sent a single stream of water one hundred feet into the air illuminated with brilliant spot lights. We looked at each other and then realized that somehow we had left the hotel without one of our two cameras.
From the menu outside its door, and the few peeks we took inside the front door, Nicholson's looked like a good place for dinner on the following night. We could then get our picture of the fountain.
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Chapter 10, April 20: The First Day in Wellington.
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This was our first full day in a big city of New Zealand. We still didn't have the local neighborhood figured out enough to find a breakfast restaurant, so we tried the breakfast buffet that was set up in the same restaurant as we had dinner the night before. Nothing was very spectacular, so I kept to the cereals with cream, while Janet was more daring and tried a heaping serving spoonful of a hot meat dish which looked like meatballs. After she returned to her place, the awful smell told us they must have been sheep kidneys. The serving was left untouched. We drove the car through the heavy morning traffic to a parking lot near the cable car entrance. This lone facility serves all of Wellington taking commuters as well as tourists five hundred feet up the side of Mount Victoria. After only one stop, we arrived at the top. From here you could get a panoramic view of the entire city and harbor area. Directly behind us, was the rear entrance to the Wellington Botanical Gardens. We ambled through several well maintained gardens each specializing in a specific type of plant. We proceeded downhill through the tree and shrub sections, making one stop at a playground filled with children, and then proceeded through the flower sections to come to the main gate. A small bandshell was located just inside the park for concerts or other meetings. Next, we passed through the herb garden and came to the roses.
By far the largest concentration of plants, the Rose Garden was laid out in concentric circles with radial paths intersecting. Many varieties were still in bloom and it was difficult to convince ourselves that we had found the prettiest blossom as the next one seemed lovelier than the last. Each of the pastel yellow, pink, white, dusty blue, and fiery red roses were all kept in a separate patch of land. We were drawn to each variety and just had to take a smell to remember them by. We visited several dozen varieties and colors stopping at each like a bee collecting pollen to admire them. The Rose Garden is the only part of the botanical gardens that the tourists get to see, since their busses have a regimented schedule to keep. We couldn't help feeling a little sorry for them as they missed the major part of the gardens.
The Begonia Hot House was being expanded, but we still managed to get in to the existing structure to see their exotic blooms. The green house structure was lined with tiers of plants slightly crowded since space was at a premium during the construction. The humidity was kept high for the plants to thrive, but this made us to want to exit quickly through the connecting door to the tea house. We rested at a small table in the tea house while we enjoyed a spot of tea and a beer and readied ourselves for the trip uphill back to the cable car stop. Even though the room was enclosed by glass panels like a hot house, we were joined by a few small birds who managed to enter through the open doors and vents in the roof to snatch a leftover crumb from a vacated table.
The path back to the cable car station was shorter, but much steeper. In an attempt to take a rest from the climb, we stopped at what looked like a museum, but turned out to be a weather station and some administrative offices. It did, however, provide a chance to repay our oxygen debt. We finally came to the top of the hill where, as luck would have it, the cable car was waiting for us. The return trip to the city took just a few minutes.
Our next goal was to walk to the visitors center a few blocks away and then over to Cuba street to explore the many antique shops there. While I was keeping an eye out for good exchange rates at the various banks, Janet found Kircalde & Kircalde, a large department store like Broadway or May Company, but situated in two buildings across a small side street from each other.
We found a new sterling silver condiment set much like the one we had used at the B&B. We agreed that this would be a unique remembrance and used the price information to compare what was available at the antique shops. The visitors center was quite crowded, so rather that wasting time waiting for a clerk, we picked up a few brochures and continued on our way to Cuba Street.
Cuba Street was long since closed to cars, and was packed with people walking about. The open-air mall shopping area had many small restaurants, bakeries, meat markets, furniture shops, clothing shops, and, of course, antique shops. We browsed through several without finding what we were looking for until we came to the end of the mall. We found a 1935 silver condiment set, but liked the 'Kirk' one better. We had to walk back that way to the car anyway, so we set our minds on the new set. Directly behind the antique shop, we went in to a pet shop to see if we could find a souvenir for Copper, who, at this very moment was at the kitty hotel waiting for something to eat. (He is always waiting to eat.) We didn't find anything for him that he did not already have, but did buy a packet of Kauri Tree seeds.
On the way back, as planned, we stopped at 'Kirk' and bought the silver condiment set. Somehow we managed to talk them out of charging us the ten percent GST which amounted to a fair sum. We walked a few blocks past where we parked the car to the Government Houses building, the 'Beehive', and the Parliament building of New Zealand. We didn't get to take the tour inside the buildings to see them in action because they were in recess for lunch, but did sit in front of the buildings to rest our feet as the miles had already begun to pile up for this day.
We walked back to the car which took us back to the hotel where we cooled our heels for awhile and got ready for dinner. Just at dusk, we walked to Nicholson's and were seated at a table overlooking the fountain we saw the night before.
The food here was much better than the night before. Besides the bistro atmosphere, with the food being prepared on grills in the middle of the room, and attentive waiters, the cuisine was excellent using mostly the local New Zealand food in Spago-like dishes. After dinner, we went up to the observation deck on top of the restaurant and gave the fountain one last chance to turn on. Our patience dwindled, so we sauntered back to the hotel only stopping at a small grocery store to pick up some breakfast cereal and milk.
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Chapter 11, April 21: The Second Day in Wellington
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The previous day's breakfast and the general lack of restaurants open for breakfast had convinced us that it was best to eat breakfast in our room. Since we had been overeating since about a week before the wedding, it was high time that we ate light anyway. We made our breakfast from the cereal and milk we had bought the night before, tea, which was provided in the room, and the apples and kiwifruit that we had brought from Hawkes Bay. First on our agenda for the day was the Wellington Zoo. A short drive north of our hotel brought us directly to the entrance. Either we were getting better at navigating and driving, or the roads were getting shorter.
After paying the admission charge, we glanced at the map and planned our route. We had the entire place to ourselves until a few bus loads of children arrived. Carefully avoiding the somewhat noisy kids, we managed to see the many animals indigenous to New Zealand which included our first look at kiwi birds.
Since kiwis are nocturnal, a special house was built for them with the lights reversed day to night. In the dark, the kiwis wake up and, after your eyes adjust to the darkness, you can see the less-than-a-foot high needle nosed birds scurrying about looking for food. The zoo was well laid out, but not too large. In two hours, we had covered everything there was to see at least once, so we exited the zoo and drove back to our hotel.
The lunch alarm rang in our stomachs, and, in spite of Rotorua, we craved fish and chips again. At the front desk, we asked for and got directions to a nearby shop. We walked over and picked up our selection to be eaten in our hotel room. Janet, who likes catsup on her french fries, ordered some to go. It must have been an unusual request, since they only had very small containers of 'tomato sauce' for which they charged us fifty cents each. It didn't take us long to demolish the two newspaper wrapped lunches accompanied by cokes from the well stocked refrigerator in our room. We let our meals settle for a while before we got restless and decided to take a walk.
We took our camera with the hope of getting a picture of the Oriental Bay fountain in action. Again, it was turned off, so we continued walking past Nicholson's towards the point. We took our time. On several occasions we descended to the shoreline and even out into the bay a few feet as we jumped between islands made of large rocks just above the water line. About a mile from the hotel, we turned at the northern extent of Point Jerningham and realized that we had found a shortcut to the airport. We stopped to check on the status of a local fisherman, who had just started fishing and had not yet caught anything. We made a u-turn and began our walk back to the hotel.
We stopped at the Wellington Park Royal for a refreshment of our usual beer and Amaretto. The hotel was exquisite, and since it was the middle of the afternoon on a weekday, we had the plush little pub to ourselves. We asked the bartender for the schedule of the fountain, and found out that on windy days, such as today was, it was not turned on because the salt spray would ruin the paint on the nearby houses. It was now obvious that we had missed our chance to capture it on film.
Our last stop on the return trip was the little grocery store to replace a few sodas that we borrowed from the hotel-stocked refrigerator and a few for immediate consumption. When we got back to our room, we kicked back for a couple of hours before beginning to get ready for dinner. At 5:00 PM, we were ready and began the short walk to Cuba Street. This was our last dinner in the country, so we picked the finest restaurant we could find. Orsini's had been recommended by several independent people, and, from the ad we saw in a tourist magazine, it sounded very good. This was the same street that we had visited the day before looking for antiques. Since the map had been consulted, we now knew that Cuba Street was closer to our hotel than where we had parked downtown, so we walked the few short blocks.
Our appetites, the fish and chips notwithstanding, were piqued and ready for an excellent dinner, but when we arrived at the restaurant, the front door was locked. Persistent knocking produced a young man who asked us to return in half an hour. It quickly became obvious that there was no way that we were going to be let in since the restaurant was not open for business yet. |
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