Feb 4 we drove from Napier to Wellington. The drive was beautiful, and it was interesting to see that all of a sudden the hills were green and not brown. We crossed some rain threshold along the way that was quite striking.

We stopped only a couple times, one of them being in Dannevirke for lunch. Other than that, we drove straight through.

Sox drove for quite a while as my mind needed a bit of a rest. Wouldn’t you know it, she got to drive this crazy, steep, windy, switch back pass that had very tiny lanes and lots of faster traffic. I was jealous she got to drive it. The hillsides were very steep, and extremely dense and lush. Scattered throughout the hillsides were really cool looking palm trees that are native to New Zealand.

Once we got into Wellington, the havoc began. It was raining kind of hard, and we were having trouble finding the street signs on the roads. There was a lot of traffic, and there were lots of one way streets at odd angles to other streets. It made for a difficult time navigating. We made it though, dropped our stuff, and set off for a bit of a walk.

We were staying on Cuba street and they have what they call a mall, essentially a pedestrian only area. We walked through here a bit taking in the sights (the rain had stopped).

Sprout was tired, so he was riding on my shoulders. A local person saw him and his face lit up. He looked up at Sprout, put his hand up, and in a loud voice said “Gimme five!”. I could feel Sprout try to shrink as much as possible. Not what that tired boy needed.

Kiwi’s are definitely very nice people. There are no problems asking for directions, or even starting up conversations. Makes traveling here a lot easier.

For dinner we decided on The Flying Burrito Brothers. It was an excellent mexican restaurant that we all thoroughly enjoyed.

After dinner it was time for the kids to bath and get to bed.

Surprisingly we got the kids to sleep at a reasonable time.

Here is Sprout sleeping on the bed next to Sox and I.

Final note. For a hotel called the Quality Hotel, that billed itself as new, we certainly found a lot of dirt, bad workmanship, and it was less than ideal for us due to the lack of a separate bedroom. Our tub was also missing the drain plug, and we had to call the front desk to get one brought up. I compare this stay to the one we had in St Catherines. The St Catherines hotel was much better set up for people travelling with kids.