New Zeland Day 5, To the Capital

On the fifth day we packed up all our stuff, and then went for our morning walk along the beach. Unfortunately the weather chose once again not to cooperate, so the pictures are kind of grey and sad looking. We then stopped to check out of the hotel. We chatted up the guy at the desk for a while, turns out he was a retired barrister living out a dream of hotel ownership and meeting interesting people who passed through. It sounded great, except for the toilet cleaning part of the deal. We even found what seemed like a great lookout spot (following another unassuming brown sign again) but you couldn't actually see anything once you got to the top through all of the pea soup fog. So we continued south eventually stopping for some breakfast at the Lilly Pond in the town of Waipukurau. The food here was incredible, including the best fresh scones I have ever eaten. We stocked up on some snacks for the road, and then continued on to Wellington. Our first order of business was to find a place to say, so one more time to the i-site we went. They found a bargain for us, right down town. I won't tell you about how lost we got on our way in, but we managed eventually to get un-lost and find parking. Next we were off to the Museum of New Zealand AKA Te Papa Tongarewa. Admission was free, so we got our money's worth the minute we stepped inside and breathed the air. We arrived hungry so we went to the museums really fabulous cafe. You could get coffee or beer (we chose beer) and the food was really great too. Refreshed and ready to rock through the museum, we walked through lots and lots of exhibits, learning about early life in New Zealand, Maori culture, Natural history, and all kinds of fun interactive stuff. We even met a museum curator who had an accent that I knew wasn't local, but I couldn't get my brain around. He was from Louisiana, had come to study 9 years ago and never left. We thanked him for dropping some extra knowledge on us and then we went on our way.

I didn't take many pictures, mostly because of the hands on nature of many of the exhibits, and it was pretty dark in all the rooms. Every once in a while it's nice to enjoy things rather than document them anyway. We shut the museum down, and then walked around the harbour and found the Mac's Brewery Restaurant. Now that I've seen the website I greatly regret not having a tasting paddle, the beers we ordered were fantastic, and we ordered an appetizer sampler that looked a lot more like dinner than the snack we intended. With full tummy's we went to check in at the Abel Tasman Hotel. By the time we got there we weren't hungry anymore but we were tired, and we knew we had an early morning, so we crashed early and prepared for a whole lot of traveling the next day too.