Long Weekend in Wellington
Took Friday off and flew down to Wellington with Sarah, Holly and Adrian. Grandma and Grandad offered (or were nicely told?) to look after the children for the weekend, which these days is a bit more involved as Theo has to go to Soccer. Well doesn't HAVE to I suppose but you know what I mean. Or given I am the only one that looks at this diary these days, I know what I mean. I hope. Right right sorry where was I? Oh yes so we flew down to Wellington. Such a nice day here and a lovely day there too. It was nice getting a chance to drop the kids off to school and for Theo to "show me" his room and all that stuff. Once dropped off Holly and Adrian picked us up and we went to the airport, had a beer (it wasn't even 9am, I was quite impressed with myself/Adrian) and flew down to the Big Smoke. The weather in Wellington all weekend was perfect. Utterly perfect. No wind, no clouds, just sun sun sun and perfect blue skies. We got to Wellington, checked into our hotel (the fantastic Bolton Hotel) and then went into town to go shopping, stopping only briefly to get dumplings. After about 0.5 seconds of shopping Adrian and I were bored so we went hunting the great Wellington Beer Trails, which is basically the fact that Craft Beer has taken over Wellington in a big way. The first place we went into was the Fork and Brewer, I've been there before but it was nice to go in and have no place to be. Had a few beers, chatted to Adrian and then we both went and chatted to the head brewer, who was the nicest guy you've ever met! I asked him so many questions about brewing, what did he think of the latest kveik yeast everyone raves about, is brewing under pressure as advertised by WilliamsWarn really beneficial for beer (yes) and other stuff. It was great! Then we left there and went and found another bar and we did that 3-4 more times before meeting up with the girls and their new clothes/sunglasses etc down at the Macs Bar on the Wellington waterfront. Then to Crabshack and then The Featherston and then Honeybadger before calling it a night!
Phew! What a day. Saturday we took it really easy and went up to the Wellington Botanical Gardens to a cafe recommended by our hotel's front of house, called Picnic. Picnic was a great little cafe, fantastic food and great service by a guy with a real funny sense of humour. Had a great bite to eat there and then took some photos in the awesome hothouse right next door. Sarah got very excited by some of the interesting plants that were in there. All sorts of varigations, or something. The girls went back into town for a bit more shopping, I did a bit more snoozing and then we met up and went for a great Sailboat ride around Wellington harbour for ~70 minutes. The wind was just nice enough for the boat to be under sail, we had a great time cruising around the harbour. Then we went back to our hotel and got ready for dinner at Dragonfly, which was probably the best place we went as far as I am concerned. The food was perfect and the cocktails really nice. Love myself a Negroni. We called it a really early night though, tired from the big one the night before.
Sunday was the last day, sadness! Found ourselves a cafe on the other side of town, had a great mince on toast. Yum. Then we went into a little shop next door and we were down looking at the baby stuff than who should we bump into but Theo's kindy teacher he loved, Ellen. Who told us she was there for a weekend of shopping with her friend getting ready for the BABY she was going to be having in 6 months time! So very exciting! We talked about how they miss Theo at Kindy and how exciting it is for her to have a baby! So funny the people you bump into, another person we see (well, saw) every day in Napier in the same tiny shop as us in Wellington.
From there we went back to the Hotel, packed up, went down to One Red Dog and caught up with Wellington Cheese again (he'd tagged along on Friday night, forgot to mention that) and then caught the cab back to the Airport and flew home! The kids were very excited to see us when we got home, as we were to see them. It was nice.
So yes, a great weekend away in Wellington. Was nice to just cut loose, not worry about kids or work or anything like that and to actually see Wellington when it's nice weather, something I don't think I've seen before. Such a good weekend away, thanks lovely wife for organising it!
Tim