I was definitely expecting to have written another one of these a bit sooner - having been on holiday for the past couple of weeks - but time really flies when you're having fun, it seems.
In my defence, I have also been doing a bit of work while we've been in New Zealand - something I negotiated so that I wouldn't blow basically my entire holiday entitlement in a oner - and, in the last week, we have been travelling around quite a bit, but still, where the hell is my holiday disappearing to? Soon I'll be back at my desk with only my memories for comfort. :-(
I shouldn't think like that, though. It's an easy trap to fall into to start worrying about the end of your holiday before your holiday has actually ended, thus tainting the end of your holiday, so I need to focus on what's to come. And what's to come is that we still have a couple more days in Wellington before flying to Melbourne for five nights, where we will attempt to re-live former glories*. It will be a great way to cap what has been a excellent trip.
A solid two weeks of our time thus far has been spent in New Zealand's capital city, Wellington, which is where Alice's parents (Eliza's grandparents) and sister and sister's family (the Tunnicliffes**) live. In fact, due to various works still to be completed at the Tunnicliffes' new house on the far side of town, everyone is currently residing under the same roof, which despite being hectic at times (with just the six adults and three kids), has provided a great opportunity for the family to spend plenty of quality time together.
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Alice's mum, Liz, aka 'nan' with her three grandchildren, Matthew, Isla and Eliza
(Yes, it's easy to mix those two names up) |
And Wellington is a great city. It's small (roughly 400,000 people) but it has a lot to offer in terms of city-based attractions - cafes, restaurants, bars, museums, etc. It's main selling point, however, is definitely its natural beauty, sitting as it does on the shores of a great natural harbour on the North Island's southern tip, bounded by hills of luscious green***. Unfortunately, it's unique geography also makes it very windy, and often significantly cooler than much of the rest of the North Island - but on a good day you can't beat it****. And in this respect we've been really lucky.
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| Wellington Marina |
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| Oriental Bay, Wellington |
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| Breaker Bay, Wellington |
Despite coming in what is the very tail end of summer (i.e. autumn), the weather has been great for us almost every day, which is great because there is nothing worse when you live in the UK than going on holiday and finding out the weather is better at home (fortunately it rarely happens).
Our luck with the weather continued during our trip to Auckland, which took us via Lake Taupo and Mount Maunganui. We had always planned to visit Auckland, as several of Alice's close pals now live there, but instead of just flying there and flying back we thought we'd turn it into a bit of an adventure and take to the roads.
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| Adding a second driver to the hire-car reservation turned out to be a shrewd move |
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| Baby of the Lake (Taupo) |
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| Huka Falls, near Taupo |
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| Papamoa Beach, Mount Maunganui |
The road trip was also something of an experiment, to see how Eliza would fare. Despite the suggestion above that she is a keen motorist, she's actually a bit funny when it comes to the car. Mostly she is fine - she'll go in without too much fuss, she'll go to sleep, and then she'll wake up and be relatively content playing with one of her crinkly books and being distracted by mum. But every so often she will absolutely lose it, and will go so red and scream so loud that she will effectively force us on to the hard shoulder. On more than one occasion, this prompted Alice to say 'I'm never getting in a car with her again'. But overall I think road trip was a success.
More concerning, given that we have a 4-hour flight to Melbourne coming up and then a 22-hour flight to London, is that on the one-hour flight from Auckland to Wellington, our worst fears were realised - we became
those people. Things were going well enough at the start, but at around the half-way point Eliza started getting cranky.
We tried desperately to avert disaster by deploying all of the distraction techniques we could in the cramped conditions, but ultimately we were fighting a losing battle. We rallied briefly when I decided I could no longer put off asking the unhelpful gentleman next to me to move so that I could get up and walk down the aisle, but almost as soon as she settled the plane began its descent into Wellington and I was forced to return to my seat and the disapproving looks of those seated nearby.
Funnily enough, though, I didn't actually feel as bad as I thought I would. It was clear that Alice and I were trying everything we could to try to keep her calm, which in the circumstances I think is all you can ask for. If you've still got a problem - fuck you.
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* Alice and I lived in Melbourne together in 2012-2013, so it's pretty exciting to be going back - and the fact that we will be going back with Eliza has a nice symmetry to it, since it's sort of where she was conceived of, if not conceived.
** The Tunnicliffes consists of Anna, Craig, Matthew (4 years) and Isla (2 years).
