Amy's Art

I believe all of my girls inherited my artistic gene.  Amy has been taking a Painting class at school this semester.  This is her latest piece of art which is on display in the lobby at school.  She is a fan of elephants, so if you look closely...

Day 12 - Down Under

Chris was up early this morning.  There must be something about not wanting to miss an alarm.  We both got up and got ready to go, leaving for the airport just after 5 am.  Our taxi ride was much faster with very few cars on the road so early.  We found the Air New Zealand Priority check in counter.  The agent must not have been too busy this morning because she greeted us by name as we arrived.  We easily checked our bags, picked up customs cards to fill out, and passed through security.  We headed to the lounge for a short wait and a little bit of breakfast.  We figured we could get a quick bite here and then we would be served some kind of breakfast on the flight.  

Remember the interesting character I sat next to on our way to New Zealand from Australia?  He watched South Park episodes the whole time?  I spotted him in the lounge before our flight and pointed him out to Chris.  The guy did a double take when he saw us.  What were the odds?  He wasn't even heading back to Melbourne but was flying to Sydney with us.  Fortunately he was seated a couple of rows ahead of us this time so I didn't have to see the stupid South Park through my peripheral vision.

Our flight to Sydney was fairly uneventful.  We were both tired from getting up so early.

Chris and I watched movies, though we had pretty much exhausted the selection of desirable movies on Air New Zealand, and likely United too.  We had a three hour lay over in Sydney, arriving earlier than our scheduled time of 6 am.  Since Customs did not open until 6 am, we had to wait on the airplane until exactly 6 am.  We walked around the airport some and then made our way to the lounge where we had a little more breakfast.

One of the global services agents found Chris and mentioned that they were having a hard time locating one of our bags but would come to the plane to let us know the status of it before we left.  Luckily they were able to find it.

We boarded our flight to LAX around 10:45 am.  It was to leave at 11:15 am.  We got settled in to our seats for the 12-hour flight.
 
And this is why flying with a Global Services guy has its perks:

Long flights and layovers made for an exhausting day.  I waited through the dinner service and then got started on my blogging.  Twelve days of fun equals hours of typing. 

A piece of advice if you are traveling and want to remember details: take notes EVERY DAY.  You will be surprised by how much your forget or confuse.  Also take pictures of signs--city, restaurants, parks, plaques--it makes jogging your memory even easier.  I would never remember everything otherwise.  I am always composing a blog post in my head, so I take pictures of random things, but it makes the blog reading much more interesting and noteworthy. 

I spent about three hours typing while Chris slept.  I have found that the easiest way for me to get back on my home schedule is to not sleep much on the way home.  Chris said he didn't have a very restful sleep.  We had breakfast service an hour or so before landing.  Not quite as tasty as some others I had had.

Our flight arrived early in to LAX, so our three-hour layover got a little longer.  Ah well, we headed for the lounge and were so grateful for more....BREAKFAST!  I charged up all of my devices and waited with our carry-ons while Chris went early to check us in.  We had a couple of hours so Chris got down to work and I surfed.  I couldn't get a book I was reading to load.

Finally we boarded our final flight of the day to Denver.  We had left Wellington, New Zealand at 6:45 am Tuesday morning and would arrive in to Denver at 1 pm on Tuesday afternoon.  Two Tuesdays made up for the Saturday I missed on the way to Australia. 

And wouldn't you know it, they served us breakfast.  I was so tired, I could NOT keep my eyes open.  I skipped the fifth breakfast of the very long day and slept for an hour or so.  Chris worked on his laptop next to me.

Our flight arrived in Denver early.  We were meeting Julie in the main terminal.  What a sweetheart she was to stay with our girls for so long, missing her husband after he went back home early to work. 

Jules, you are a gem.  (See that little twist on words I made there?)  We chatted with her for about 45 minutes before she needed to get to her gate, and we headed HOME!

Day 11 - Down Under

I  woke up at 6:30 am (that was after falling asleep at 2:30 am).  Breakfast was at 7:45 am and we were supposed to meet our rafting group at 8:15 am for instructions, get our wet suits, and load the bus.  

We were given a long-sleeved shirt, a fleece long sleeve, a wet suit, booties, a helmet, and then another jacket.  Our bus ride to the drop off point took about thirty minutes through beautiful, rolling hills, and farms.  Sheep dotted the landscape.  I wished that the windows of the bus weren't so dirty.  I had my water proof camera which wouldn't have given outstanding pictures, but at least pictures. Good thing we have memories.

We had more instruction before getting in our rafts and starting down the river.  Besides our guide, Spencer, there were five of us in the raft.  Chris and I along with three girls--Matilda and Josie from Norway and Anna from America.  Anna was the first to be dumped from the raft, almost as soon as we got going.  She was a little embarrassed.

I was the next one to get dumped as we went down our first rapid.  Another boat came up behind me and scrunched me against the side of our raft.  Chris was quick to haul me back in to the boat.  Refreshing, but I would have preferred staying in the raft.  

As we were going through another section of rapids, one of the guys on another raft lost his paddle.  All three of the rafts stopped.  One guide had his people hold their raft in place as he went to retrieve the paddle.  The guide from the second raft, from which the paddle had been lost, stood up on a rock making sure the paddle could be retrieved.  As the first guide passed by, he threw the paddle in the air and the second guide jumped off the rock, caught the paddle in mid air, and swam back to his boat.

Matilda had been anchoring us by hanging on to a rope conveniently attached to the rocks.  She let go after the two other boats passed by us, we seemed to be the anchor raft, and we were all on our way again.

That wasn't the last time for us to be in the water though as our guide wasn't able to keep the raft from overturning further downstream and dumping us all.  I swallowed a huge gulp of water as I tried to get out from under the raft and then tried to float on my back with my feet in front of me as we had been instructed.  We were all wearing life jackets, but the back floating position was mostly impossible, especially as I was hanging on to my paddle.  

An extra guide was in a kayak taking pictures of us all the way down the river.  He finally hauled me on to his kayak and then transferred me to our raft once it was righted.  Chris had been hauled from the river by people on another raft.  That was fun.  Not really, but at least our wet suits kept us warm; they said the temperature of the water was about 70ish degrees, so at least we didn't freeze.  We continued on through class three through five rapids until after about two and half hours, we floated up to the river bank next to River Valley.

We all climbed out of the raft and carried it back up to the raft shed.  We removed our helmets first and returned them, then our over jacket, next our fleece and long sleeved shirt, and finally we slid our wet suits off while we showered.  I think that must have made them easier to remove.  Since we had to check out of our room before leaving on the raft trip, we had to make use of the community bathrooms and facilities to change and dry off.  I put on a little make up, combed through my hair, and tried to keep the sand flies from biting me.  I had to put on bug spray to keep those little buggers away.

Chris and I checked out all of the photos and would have like to have a copy, but the memory stick was $80 for each raft group.  The girls from our raft decided they didn't want to split the cost, so we would have ended up paying the full $80 ourselves.  We opted not to.  We took care of any extras on our bill, and were on our way.

The rental car needed to be back at Hertz by 6 pm when they closed or we would have been charged an extra day.  We had plenty of time with a short stop for lunch in Taihape at Soul Cafe.  We stopped at this cute little shop called Piccadilly next to the restaurant and found a beautiful flower pot to be a memento of our trip.  As we drove, we chatted a little with the girls.  We had been off the grid at the lodge, so it was nice to touch base again.  The girls had been watching The Oscars.  We facetimed with Kristen as she got ready for bed, and Misha got out of bed to say hi to us.  We prayed with Kristen before she climbed into bed and then said good night.  We were nearing Wellington and needed to get back on Google Maps to navigate our way to our hotel--Amora--for the night.

It was rush hour, so it required a lot more concentration on Chris' part as he drove.  We checked in to the hotel.  I went up to the room with the luggage and Chris headed off to Hertz to return the car.  He had to fill up the car first.  $100!  Their gas was about $6 a gallon.

This was my view from the hotel room.  Beautiful huh?

While Chris was gone, I organized our stuff for our flight home in the morning.  We had gone through a lot of our snacks, but still had some to pack.  He returned and we headed off to dinner.  We ended up a little place called Ellington's for burgers-mine was falafel again.  Since we were further down the pier, closer to Oriental Bay, it was a little more residential.  We decided to go for a walk.  They had a few beach boxes, though they were used more for storing boating supplies.  We walked further to a grassy beach area where lots of families were enjoying the beautiful evening and kids were jumping into the bay.  

Since we had an early morning flight at 6:45 am, and we would need to be up early, we showered before going to bed.

Day 10 - Down Under

We hadn't been too pleased with the breakfast or the service at the hotel for the past couple of days.  Chris found this place called Americanos a couple blocks away.  It was hidden below ground and offered somewhat American-style breakfasts.  Chris' breakfast was huge and he couldn't finish it all.  I had a bowl of oatmeal with soy milk.  More places offered at least soy milk as an option now and some even offered almond milk.  It was a nice change since I don't care much for regular milk any more.

We returned to the hotel to pack up our stuff.  Chris then walked to the Hertz office to pick up a rental car, maybe a 30 minute walk from our hotel.  He returned with a Holden (Chevy) Malibu.  I will admit, I was a little nervous with the whole driving on the other side of the road thing.  In the city, it was a lot more challenging but once we got outside of the city, it was pretty smooth going.  Notice the "Keep Left" Arrow?

Google maps was great at directing us to the LDS church building in Wellington.  There were at least three sets of missionaries meeting with the Wellington ward, one missionary even from Ft. Collins, Colorado.

Chris said there was a Samoan ward that met at 9 am.  The English-speaking ward met at 11 am.  We stayed for Sacrament Meeting.  Following the meeting, we changed out of our church clothes and headed out again, getting on Highway 1 toward Rangitikei.  It would be a four-hour drive approximately.  Chris was quite handily getting the hang of driving on the wrong side of the road.  It boosted his confidence for renting a car in the future in other locations for explorations.

We made a stop at Queen Elizabeth Park about an hour from Wellington.  The beach was full of kids training to be life guards.  The beach was littered with shells, some areas covered in broken shells.  I found some cool shells here as well.

I commented to Chris after we passed a detour, "Can you imagine navigating our way around with a paper map to get to where we needed to be?"  He replied, "I can imagine me doing it.  I can't imagine you doing it!"  I am directionally challenged.  I admit it.

We stopped again shortly after Queen Elizabeth Beach at MacKay Beach where there was a US Marine Corp Memorial.  We read the memorial and then continued on.  This part of New Zealand was full of rolling, green hills, some dotted with cows and sheep.  I laughed as we passed a sign advertising Pony Poo for $1 a bag.  A lot of the farms were surrounded with rectangular-manicured shrubbery, some of them well over ten feet tall.  They liked their manicured trees for sure.  The farms were beautiful, surrounded with trees and some with flowers.  The small towns we passed through had the main highway through the middle of town. Outside of Wellington, the small towns were all that we encountered.  We stopped in Bulls for a quick snack and bathroom stop at McDonalds.  We were able to Facetime with Kristen and Julie.  They had had a fun Saturday together.  Amy had a work meeting, and Misha was just content to stay home and have some quiet time by herself.

We continued on and realized that the miles of backed up traffic was due to an air show.  Chris might have wished he had known about the air show sooner as an F16 zoomed across the sky.  We stopped for a few pictures, but honestly a snapshot of the area just wouldn't do it justice.  It was beautiful for miles and miles.

We exited Highway 1 onto a windy road that continued on for about 45 minutes toward River Valley.  We arrived at 7 pm, dinner time.  Since we were both quite hungry, we happily dropped our luggage off in our rustic room and returned to the lodge.  The lodge and surrounding area was filled with young people on what was called Kiwi Excursions.  They traveled around the country from one experience to another.  The lodge had some hostel type rooms with bunks, a common kitchen area, and a few toilets and shower stalls.  Chris and I had a room to ourselves, gratefully.  It also had a bathroom.  We wouldn't need much as we were just there for one night and were leaving early the next day on a white water rafting excursion.

Dinner was mostly good. They had Yorkshire pudding, an English bread of a sort.  We didn't hang out with all the twenty-somethings much as their interests were completely different from ours--drinking, hooking up, drinking....  You get the idea.

Our room was rather warm so we opened the window for awhile.  There were no screen on the windows, which I found odd.  I didn't want to keep it open all night long. For the noise and the bugs.  I slept rather poorly.  I was still awake at 2 am and finally opened my iPad to read a book. That seemed to help and I drifted off to sleep around 2:30.  Not without crazy dreams though.  I dreamt there was a spider under my skin on my hand.  A big black one, and its legs would come through my skin as it seemed to want to escape my skin.  It was freaky and unnerving.  I'm not big on bugs.  In fact, this is the huge bug I had to smash four times when we first arrived.  It was about two inches long.

Day 9 - Down Under

Except for the day we spent together last Sunday, this was the second day for Chris to be off in the last three weeks with all of his travel and work.  He was more than ready for a break.  We tried to plan out our day so that we saw everything we wanted to do.  As we were walking to the Te Papa Museum, we stopped at the Underground Market.  It was set up in an underground parking lot.  There wasn't a lot there, but enough that we were able to find some mementos for the girls.

We continued on to the museum where we planned to visit the Gallipoli exhibit that had come highly recommended by many different people.  There was a line to get in to the exhibit and we waited for maybe 20 to 25 minutes.  Many of the museums in town were free to visit.  I think the only part of the museum that required an entrance fee was a Bug Exhibit and Megan had said it wasn't worth the fee.

It was an amazing exhibit designed by Peter Jackson the creator of the Lord of the Rings movies (which were filmed partially in Wellington as well as surrounding areas).  The soldiers in the above photos were huge, perhaps ten feet tall, and complete in every detail, down to hairs on the back of their hands.  It was a sobering, impressive exhibit, and we learned a lot about the ANZAC and Gallipoli war.  We wandered through the Maori exhibit as well and then hurried back to our hotel to pick up my backpack with water, snacks, and camera for the afternoon ferry trip to Eastbourne.  We purchased tickets for the ferry through East to West Bay Excursions and then stopped for a quick lunch at Mexi-Can a short distance away.  It was passable Mexican food, but close by and convenient.

Our ferry left at 2:15 pm.  I got on first while waiting for Chris and quickly made my way up top to claim a spot.

We stopped first at Somes, but no one got on or off so we continued on to Eastbourne, across the bay from Wellington.  Unless you were coming to hang out at the beach all day, there wasn't a lot notable about Eastbourne.  We walked to their small downtown, but were underwhelmed.

Chris had this wild hair that we should hike.  I was not thrilled.  Somehow he wasn't factoring in that we would have to walk up the side of a small mountain for this hike.  He pointed out that we were going to do the "EASIEST" hike.  I pointed out in my mind, and probably out loud, that EASIEST didn't actually mean that it was an EASY hike.  And it wasn't.  I just wanted to get up the side of the mountain as quickly as possible and set off at a rather brisk pace.  Chris did his best to keep up with me, and my assessment was correct: we pretty much had to go up and up and up.  In fact, my Fitbit recorded that I had done 99 flights of stairs!  I felt like a sweaty mess.

We shared comments on Facebook concerning the hike, and as we lay in bed later that evening, Chris said, "I just love that we can argue on Facebook."  Dude!

The brochure said that the hike took an hour and 15 minutes to complete; we were done in 45 minutes.  I just wanted to be done and I didn't want to miss the last ferry of the day.  There was nothing in Eastbourne if we were unfortunate enough to miss the ferry!

As we walked along the beach, I picked a few shells from the beach for our shell jar.  We walked up on the pier to wait for the ferry and alternately watched and took pictures of all the people jumping into the water.

When some of the guys saw that I was taking pictures, they were happy to perform for the camera.  They were most intent on creating the biggest splash.

The ferry arrived a little late.  Chris and I found a spot on the upper level near the front.  We were unfortunate enough to have a bunch of punk American 20-somethings stand next to us.  They were jerks.  Finally after one guy pulled out a beer, drank it, and then started burping loudly next to Chris, Chris had had enough.  The guy drinking the beer apologized for the burping, but one of his mates got riled up.  I might have said something not so nice to him and he started spouting off in order to look cool in front of his friends.  We were glad when the ferry ride ended.

We returned to the hotel and sank gratefully onto the bed.  Pooped.  That's what we were.

Our restaurant for the evening was called Burger Liquor.  I had a fish burger and a salad while Chris had a hamburger, milkshake, and fries.  The ketchup for the fries was a house-made brand that really just tasted like tomatoes to me.  Not my favorite.  The fish burger was tasty and the salad was really good.

As we returned to the hotel, we stopped at a grocery store for a few snacks to take with us on our travels on Sunday.  It had been a busy, hot day and we were happy to finally fall in to bed.  

Day 8 - Down Under

Amy had texted me around 4:30 am.  My texts come through on my Fitbit and my buzzing wrist woke me up.  I wasn't able to go back to sleep afterward.  She had some questions about the tennis team at school and the deadlines that were approaching.

I found the fitness center on the third floor and made use of the elliptical machine.  I listened to my workout playlist while watching a muted game of cricket on TV.  No sense.  Cricket made absolutely no sense to me.  I returned to the room to find Chris had showered and was getting ready for work.  I quickly jumped in the shower as well so that I could join him for breakfast.

Chris' last day of work before we had a few days to be tourists together!  Yay, I wasn't thrilled to do all of the exploring on my own.  Chris and I had breakfast in the hotel restaurant.  Franco joined us after awhile (though just to wait) as he and Chris were going to leave for their first meeting together.  Our breakfast service was rather slow, and Chris had to wolf down his steel cut oats.  I stayed a little longer to finish, but found Chris and Franco returning to the hotel lobby as I exited the restaurant.  Chris had forgotten to leave money for me and had returned to bring me some.

I planned to join a Walking Tour at 10:00 am so had a little time to chat with the girls, organize my luggage, and make notes from the past couple of days.

I found the walking tour group by spying the bright green jacket of the tour guide just as they were leaving their rendezvous location.

I paid my money to our guide Lana and enjoyed what locals deemed the most perfect weather after an awful summer.  There was a slight breeze, but nothing crazy like Windy Wellington was known for.  Lana was originally from Washington, DC but had married a Kiwi and had lived in New Zealand for the past 38 years.  She was knowledgeable of the area and interesting to listen to.  We started at the pier, learning local and Maori history along the way, then moved to the business district next, then the government area, and ended up at Old Saint Paul's church.

Wellington was not known for beautiful architecture.  In fact, they tried to create crazy looking buildings on purpose just to have something different.  I wasn't impressed.  Some of their buildings were downright ugly and designed on a whim.

One of the cool features on the tour though was this clock that opened up every hour on the hour and gave a short history of the area.

In the same building was a jewelry store that Princess Kate had stopped at while visiting with Prince William.  She purchased three pairs of earrings while there, and succeeded in making the shop very popular as everyone wanted to order the $800 earrings that she had purchased.

Once the tour was finished, Lana, the guide, pointed me in the right direction toward the InterContinental.  I stopped at the Pita Pit and ordered a falafel-filled pita to take back to the hotel to eat.  It was delicious.  I ate a lot of falafel on this trip.  Some better tasting than others.

Chris wasn't finished with his meetings yet, so I walked across the street to the Wellington Museum to check it out.

Chris finished his meetings at 3:00 pm, and I was happy to meet him back at the hotel.  He changed out of his suit and tie and we were off to the Cable Car to begin exploring Wellington, New Zealand together. The Cable Car ran from Lambton Quay (pronounced key) up to Wellington Botanic Garden, a garden that spread over acres of land on the mountainside.

The Cable Car was a cool ride 120 meters up the side of the mountain, dropping us off at the top of the Botanic Gardens.  They had this nifty Sundial of Human Interaction.  It was about 4:20 in the afternoon when we took this picture.

Chris and I wandered around a bit and then meandered down the path on the mountain through various themed gardens--the ferns, the hydrangeas, the tree house, a kids' area, and finally the Lady Norwood Rose Garden.  Sadly the conservatory was closed.  It was full of begonias.  Every so often we would pass a park bench with a dedication plaque.  On seeing one, Chris commented, "I hope that is what people say about me someday."  The plaque read, "He always made us laugh."

We walked back to the hotel and talked to the girls for a little bit.  It was Thursday evening for them.

Chris chose an Argentinian restaurant for dinner on Cuba Street.  His choices and mine don't always mesh since I am not a big meat eater, but usually I am able to find something suitable.  I thought I was getting a pizza with carmelized onions.  In reality it was a slice of some kind of bread that was about 4 inches thick with a few onions on top.  Good bread, but way too many carbs for me.  We also ordered baked cheese and a salad.  Not ideal for me, but Chris loved his meat dish. Good thing I was getting so much walking in during the day.

We sat outside in the back of the restaurant next to two ladies and started chatting with one of them--Megan (pronounced Migan).  Her friend's name was Kuru (with a rolled r).  Kuru sat quietly as Megan talked to us for probably half an hour.  I finally asked if I could take their picture (because I am always composing a blog post in my head), and Megan turned back to include Kuru.  Kuru was pretty quiet and didn't seem to mind the exclusion. 

Fresh green-lipped mussels anyone?

Megan worked at the Te Papa Tongarewa (meaning our place) Museum as an art curator where we planned to visit on Saturday morning.  I asked her what her job was there after Chris had mentioned that I wasn't really interested in the art a couple of times.  Ah well, she wasn't offended.  Talkative though.  Our walk back to the hotel took about ten minutes.