Day 7: Wellington

Sept 27th

Logan woke up about 5:30 but went back to sleep by 6am or so. I'm pretty sure he woke up from the cold (his blankets had been kicked off, he was scrunched up in one corner of his crib, and his eyes were still closed yet he was crying), so we just fed him a warm bottle of milk and he soon fell back to sleep.

We got a later start than we had planned. After packing up, I asked around at the front desk about a half day LOTR tour (including Helm's Deep), that we had hoped to do. Yet, no one knew anything about it nor had heard about it. Gah. I was kicking myself for not doing enough research ahead of time (I had just assumed the hotels would know all about it!). :( So, we took a cable car up the local mountain and then walked around a beautiful Botanic garden instead.

It was windy as hell and super cold but I had a warm jacket with Logan on me as well, so I didn't think it was all that bad. ;-) Jon, Eric and Jill were freezing their asses off however. Although I was warm, the walk was hard on my back. :( Oh well, you win some, you lose some.

During our walk we came across a kid's playground that had a small zip-lining set up (cool! if only Logan were old enough!), tons of tulips, an herb garden, and more. It all reminded me of the Golden Gate Park. We meandered down several paths through the gardens and back into town, where we went searching for a place to eat lunch.

And yet....

Yep, you guessed it. Everything was closed. *sigh*

Molly directed us to a German beer house (for the life of me, I can't remember it's name unfortunately) which was open - yay! - and had great food. Logan pulled the napkin out from under my soup bowl and spilled the entire bowl all over my plate and table. Damnit. Gotta watch for that. He's growing increasingly quick on the draw!


Jon still needed his LOTR fix, so after lunch we headed out to some suburbs of Wellington to visit the Weta Cave, a small museum which featured props, books, displays and clothes galore on all the various movie characters that Weta Workshop has created over the years. Jon, Eric and Jill watched a short film on "behind the scenes" stuff, but Logan and I skipped it since he was SO loud in the small theatre.

We left with tons of time to get to the Ferry - and it's a good thing too. We got totally turned around and lost while trying to find the Ferry terminal. It was actually really hard to find! When we finally did find it we were right on time for checking in. ;-)

While Jon went off somewhere to straighten out the rental car return, Eric, Jill and I checked ourselves, and our luggage in.

Shortly after, I realized OH SHIT. I left Jon's Dramamine packed in our bags! And, if any of you know Jon well enough, you know he gets TERRIBLE motion sickness :(

Sooooo, I sweet talked the guy behind the counter to let me back into the checked luggage area to rummage through ALL the bags in the back and find ours to get the meds out. I was taking so long he actually just left me back there so he could go back up front to man the counter (again, never in the States would we be allowed to do that!).

Only, I couldn't find it.

UGH.

Where the HELL did I pack it???

I got back to where we were all seated, not sure what we were going to do, when I finally remembered I had smartly packed it in the diaper bag ahead of time so that we'd have it with us while traveling. Yeesh. Planning ahead sure as hell doesn't work if you don't remember you did it. ;-)

Unfortunately, Jon still got sick. :( The ferry ride was long and a bit rocky (particularly in the channel between the two islands), but not that bad for most of us. There was a kid's play area that Logan (and I) basically spent the entire time hanging out in until he finally fell asleep on me (in the Ergo carrier) toward the end of the ride. It was night time and dark out, so we didn't get to see much of the ride at all, but apparently it's supposed to be "one of the most beautiful ferry rides in the world". :)

We checked into our hotel in the small teeny town of Picton. Jon, Eric and Jill wanted to find somewhere to eat, but Logan was conked out and I was pretty tired myself. So, I had them drop us off so I could put him (and myself) to bed while they went out for dinner.

Jon and I got the "kids" room with two singles since that's where Logan's crib had been set up. Oh boy - it was going to be a cozy couple of nights.


Editor's Note: Shortly after I published this post, Eric reminded me of the name (and link) to the Beer Cafe we ate at in Wellington. Not German, but Belgian! Leuven, the Belgian Beer Cafe. Thanks Eric! :)