Welly weekend fun

Hello!

Have had a rather good weekend, spent mainly with Anna who is great fun! On Friday night she came over for dinner. She is staying with a very nice Muslim family who have asked her not to bring pork or alcohol into the house, so I went the whole hog (harhar) and got some fantastic sausages from Moore Wilsons, and a bottle of red. We had these excellent sausages with kumara mash, fried garlicky mushrooms and salad - nom nom. Anna had brought a lovely creamy yoghurty dessert with berries on the bottom - kind of like trifle but with no cake....) We then made some new buddies in the hostel (other Germans who had been eyeing Anna's dessert until we offered them the leftovers!) and all proceeded to drink whiskey and coke out of bowls (no clean mugs left). Then we ended up going out to Mighty Mighty which is a pretty brilliant club/bar on Cuba St where we danced the night away - brill times!

Despite collapsing into bed at about 3am, I still woke up before 9am on Saturday and dragged my sorry butt out of bed for a sausage and egg butty (using the sausage leftover from the night before). This did the trick with the hangover and I was soon well enough to head out into the gorgeous day without screaming "ARRRGH! MY EYES!" Which is a good job because it was like this - mmmmm.

click this to read the poem!

I went to the "underground market" at Frank Kitts Park - despite the shady name it is a lovely event selling loads of handmade and beautiful goodies! I bought myself some thermal leggings and EXCELLENT socks there (angora, possum fur, merino wool and cashmere. I'm never taking these babies off). And a few presents - hint hint Izzy ;) After spending too much money, I went for a stroll along the harbourfront, taking lots of photos, then snuck to Meow AGAIN (now up to 5 out of 9 on my loyalty card, this is terrible!) for coffee and a lovely ginger slice. After this it was time to catch the train to Redwood to see John and Liz!

You may remember this lovely couple (Liz is the third cousin of my friend Leila) from my first weekend in Wellington, when they came to collect a desperately homesick English girl from her hostel and take her to a concert and ply her with tea and tasty food! and family times with 5 year old twins and an adorable almost-2 yr old. I mean, look at her:

(she's blurry because she's jumping - she always jumps! How she has that much energy I do not know....)

Had great fun playing with the kids and eating some v. tasty chicken and kumara. After the kids' bathtime the grown-ups (John, Liz, their friend Miriam and me) had some delicious baked apples and custard and played Carcassonne! Which Liz won. I came third.... addictive game!

Miriam kindly gave me a lift home and I crashed into bed pretttty early (before 11) after a good Skype home to find out how things are. Everyone is staying positive, yay! Love you all.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx <----family cuddles

This morning I Skyped home from bed - oh the luxury.... Sunday morning is always good for internet here, no-one is awake and clogging up the wifi! Then after breakfast I met up with Anna who fortunately has the same devout attitude to morning coffee as me, so we began our day with a trip to Ernesto's on Cuba St for cappuccinos. We also got me a friand (no idea what this is apart from almondy gluten-free awesomeness) and a brownie for Anna! After nomming these, we headed off to Zealandia which is a giant wildlife park surrounded by a Jurassic-Park-esque fence to keep the bad domestic animals out and away from the endangered wildlife within. Apparently your average house cat can jump 1.8 m or something crazy - errrrk!

Normally it's really expensive to get in but today was "Wellington Open Day" so it was gold coin entry - i.e. $1, i.e. 50p. The cable car to get up to Kelburn was also gold coin! Boom!

We had a great walk around it - didn't really see any wildlife but it was beautiful scenery and I kind of felt as though a velociraptor was about to burst out of the bushes and pounce on me. Exciting times!

Then after a bit of tapas in a pub in Kelburn on the way back down the cable car, we headed back down into Welly and Anna had the excellent idea of getting the bus to Island Bay for a walk along the beach! So glad we did this, it was gorgeous! All in all I reckon we walked about 7 or 8km today, good work. Work off all the cake and booze....hopefully....

Now I am back in the hostel - have had a lovely Thai red curry takeaway from Aroy on Courtenay Place (only managed half, so half will be lunch tomorrow! Pretty good for $11!) Currently polishing off my cuppa tea and a cheeky bit of Lindt chocolate. mmmm.

love from Roz xxxx

(arty pretentious photo taken from one of the Te Papa sculptures...)