We got up bright and early this morning, checked out of the hotel and made our way to the Jucy depot at the airport to drop off our cars. After some quick formalities we got a lift on the shuttle bus to the airport terminal and got some food. We even had a little bit of time to kill.
The flight was really short, I was pretty tired but just when we got to cruising altitude and the seat belt sign turned off we had what felt like 20 minutes before we started our decent. I think the whole flight was only about 45 minutes.
When we arrived we were welcomed by Gandalf riding an eagle in the airport. There was apparently a few more giant models around but that’s about all we saw.
We got our luggage and headed over to the Jucy terminal to get our cars sorted out. We were getting the same arrangement as last time, one van and one small car. We were waiting so long for the cars to get organised! I’m not even sure why it took so long, but it felt like longer than our actual flight!
A little while ago, Joe made a joke when Chris was driving and Anth was navigating that it was like Chris was Han Solo and Anth was Chewbacca so we continued on the joke and picked a character for each person in our group. We had a bit of a laugh at this and so I threatened to photoshop our faces on to the characters at some point. Well because we had so much time to kill and a bright green wall to use as a green screen so I managed to find a good Star Wars picture that had all the characters we were talking about and then took photos of everyone with their face at the right angle to give it a go.
We finally got our cars sorted out and headed towards our hotel. Driving and parking around Wellington is pretty shocking! After coming from the vast open country side to a built up city, it took us little while to adjust to driving the big Jucy van around the tight streets and garages. We arrived at our hotel and tried to check in but the lady at the desk said we had only booked two rooms instead of three and that there were no more available. This stressed us out a little bit because there had obviously been a mistake. Amy was on top of things as usual and she ended up calling booking.com while in the meantime a few of us tried to find some last minute accommodation for our fairly large group.
It sounds like the guy that Amy was speaking to from booking.com was really friendly and helpful. He assured us that they would help us find a place to sleep tonight and did all the ringing around to organise things. We ended up going to get some lunch while we waited to here back from him. He ended up chasing up the transactions and followed the audit trail to a mistake made by the hotel and then proceeded to get our refund and book another hotel for us.
Lunch was actually really good! We found a well rated sushi place but instead of a dine in restaurant, it was just a tiny little shop in an alleyway but it seemed to be really popular. We got in line and when we got in you grab a pair of tongs and fill a box with whatever sushi you want and pay per item. In the end it was actually pretty cheap and really good sushi!
After lunch we still had some time to kill and Tom spotted a massage place nearby. My shoulder and my ankle were fairly sore still but no one else was really interested so the two of us went in to check it out. We ended up getting a one hour massage and it was really good! Just what we needed after a flight and a day of messing around with hotels!
We got a message from Amy telling us that our accommodation was all sorted so we made our way to our new hotel, which was actually in a slightly better location for our sightseeing agenda. We bought our bags up and got settled in for a bit of a break. After a bit of time we met up for dinner and went to a Malaysian restaurant. The place was packed and there was a wait time to get in, but it seemed to be a pretty good option that wasn’t burgers or Japanese for a change! The food was pretty good but nothing too special. I ordered a soup but it was a little too peppery for me but I got through most of it.
The most stand out thing was Tom ordered a durian coffee which stunk us all out!
We made a stop at a grocery store for some breakfast and snacks for the next day and went home. I was supposed to write my blogs but I remembered about those photos I took earlier and thought I’d give that a crack first. After doing on character and cracking up laughing I just had to continue. I ended up spending way more time than I should have on it but I’m pretty happy with the final result! I was going to paste it into our group chat but thought I’d wait until morning so I could see everyones reaction! By this stage it was early hours of the morning so I went to bed.
