New Zealand - Wellington

Wellington is miles and miles from Napier, especially in Margery! It's right on the southern tip of the North Island and it took us seven hours to drive here. It's the capital of New Zealand, although it's much smaller than Auckland. If we were travelling around New Zealand on any kind of sensible route we wouldn't have come this far south until we were ready to head to the South Island, but we've come at this time for two reasons. The first reason being that this is another place that might have a job for me so we wanted to see it in order to decide if it would be worth our while bombing down here from the other side of the country should I be called for interview.



The second reason is that Ben has a couple of friends living here; Rich and Vicky (friends from uni in Swansea - Rich is the one who looks freakishly like him!) and Rich was performing in the Wellington Carnival this weekend. So we've been parked up on their driveway for the last few days, despite the fact the they've just had a baby and Vicky's parents are her too.

I've been to Wellington before and I hated it! All I remember is arriving here the same weekend as some kind of children's sporting event was on. We couldn't find anywhere to stay and the cold, windy, rainy, steeply sloping streets were choc-a-block with matching shell-suit clad kids! However I vowed to not let that experience cloud my view of Wellington this time and visiting a place as a holiday destination and somewhere you may live, we are discovering, are two very different experiences.

Saturday saw us hit the Wellington Carnival. It's a big, free festival in the city centre, with all the usual stuff; bands, hippy clothing for sale, food stalls (none up to the standards of Groovy Smoothies though obviously!) and then a big carnival parade though the streets in the evening. It was the best behaved festival I've ever been to though! Ben and I got a few disapproving looks for drinking beer in the streets (which as it turns out is illegal, but no drinking outside at a festival? Come on!) Anyway, Rich plays in a samba band and their huge fish float, fifty drummers wearing fish on their heads and loads of scantily clad, glittery belly-dancing girls looked fab. In fact they won first place! Ben and I were so impressed whilst we were "backstage" watching them practice that we vowed that if we move here he'd join the drummers and I'd join the dancers (I'm not entirely comfortable with the tiny outfits though!).



Wellington is an attractive city set around a bay, complete with sailing boats :0) It's a manageable size (three hundred thousand population) but has loads going on. In fact it promotes itself as being the culture capital of New Zealand (which admittedly doesn't give it much competition!) but means it has some of the best restaurants, nightlife, theatre, music, shopping etc and loads of events going on. It also has a surprisingly rugged coastline running around it's suburbs, as well as lots of green areas which make it feel as if you're miles away from the city as soon as you get out of the centre.

As you're probably gathering by now... We really like it! However, we're very torn. All the stuff that goes on in Wellington appeals to us, and we would make the most of it, but... Do we really want to live in a city? Did we come all this way to move to another city? I honestly think that Wellington has more to offer us than Cardiff does (which is of course where everywhere inevitably gets compared to). It is beautiful, I'd be happy and proud to have people visit us here and I think we could have a much higher quality of life here than at home. Plus this is the best option when it comes to geek jobs for Ben.



BUT... the climate is nowhere near as good as in other parts of New Zealand. The Winters are pretty bleak and Wellington is famous for it's wind - and it REALLY is windy, even when the sun is shining like today. It's also more expensive to live here than most of the rest of the country and obviously comes with those other city delights like commuting and traffic jams (which you hardly ever see in the rest of New Zealand) and people who are less friendly and have less time for you.

So there you have it. We do really like it and could, I'm sure, be very happy living here but maybe it's not quite different enough for us to have moved to the other side of the World for. We will have to see what the rest of the country has to offer :0)

Ben:
More photos here.