P Squared meet Frodo

Now if the name Wellington sounds familiar to you, it may be because The Lord of the Rings was filmed there (not that we knew that) but true to the movie, the Wellington landscape was amazing. It reminded us a lot of San Francisco, with the city being built on hills and near a harbor… except that it was much more green and lush 

Day 1 in Wellington was spent site seeing… in the rain (our Auckland luck ran out it seemed). A quick hop on the town’s cable car to the top of the mountain (yay, no having to climbing up!) gave a beautiful view of the city. It’s actually pretty cool that many of the locals have their own cable system to help them up to their house (it’s like having an outdoor elevator!). A scenic walk down the Botanic Gardens, and a wrong turn, led us to the “Beehive” aka the Parliament building.

Next stop, Oaks Satay… this has to be mentioned on the blog. Day after day, night after night, we search the city for our next big bite… Oaks Satay was the best meal we’ve had to date (please note picture). We hesitated to go in initially. Random door between two posh shops, a worn out laminated poster displaying pictures of their various options and a set of stairs leading us somewhere that we couldn’t really see… hmmm. But the couple coming down the stairs said “I promise it’s good and cheap… just try it.” So try it we must.. Delish! We even considered waking up early to make another trip to town to have it before we left Wellington!

With warm food in our bellies and our energy renewed, we visited the Te Papa Museum to get an inside look at the New Zealand culture. Besides a few birds, nearly everything in NZ has been imported in… the animals, plants, spices, etc… So as you can imagine, with such a mix of items, comes a mix of people. We’ve come across people from all parts of the world during our travels. Parimal has decided to work on his Aussie accent… currently it sounds more Scottish, either way please remember to ask him to do it for you once we return home.

 Besides LOTR, this part of NZ is known for their wineries. We decided to take a wine tour to Martinbourough… as we learned from our tour guide, NZ produces .5% of the world’s wine and this area produces 2% of that .5% (does that make sense?) Back to the point… Our tour guide, Brian, was really cool and laid back. He was currently retired and had traveled and lived all over the world. Since there was only 3 of us on the tour (we met Ronald, a fellow American working in Wellington), Brian took a few detours with us. We saw a few places that LOTR had been taped (we did oooo and ahhhh appropriately until Brian showed us pictures from the movie and then it was a big “OHHH.” After a mountainous ride, with a lot of uphill and downhill turns (Piyusha’s motion sickness is definitely being tested on this trip), we made it to the quaint town of Martinbourough. Martinbourough is also known for their Pinot Noir. After a few tastings, we stopped for lunch and visited the town’s wine center (btw, the foundrt of the town was British and he mapped the streets like the Union Jack – the British Flag.. which made for some interesting sharp turns when we were lost). Curious about olives and olive oils, especially after we saw a million olive trees, Brian took us on a detour to an olive farm. This was really amazing. We got to see how olive oil is made… taste an olive from the tree (can we say bitter???) and taste various different oils (smoked paprika, lemon, fennel, vanilla, oh my!) and even candied olives (did someone say pomegranate flavored olives??) Great detour. Back to wine tasting… We passed a winery owned by a mad scientist! Ok he really wasn’t mad but he was a chemist that owns a winery, not opened to the public and you have to be on a waiting list just to get on the mailing list. We ended our trip at an organic winery. They welcomed us into their home and allowed us to taste their wines sitting on the couch in front of a fire (now that’s good marketing). After relaxing for a bit, back to Wellington we go… and actually back to Australia we go!

 Oh yes, the count. Still 0s on all fronts!