Matui-Somes Island

Yesterday we decided to journey to Matui-Somme island. We took a ferry which took a little over an hour because we had to drop people off in other places first. The island has a moderately interesting history to it. You can check it out on Wikipedia.

The four of us wandered around the island for about 1 1/2 hours taking pictures and taking in the scenery. The island has a varied collection of wild-life on it but we were unable to locate most of it. On that note we were able to find the extremely aggressive seagulls. One gull followed us for a good couple minutes dive bombing us and just generally being belligerent.

Later that night we played Swedish Yahtzee. I call it Swedish Yahtzee because the game was quite a bit different from the version I am used to. Malin won every game and Jennie lost every game. I came somewhere in the middle with Eric and Christian. We also enjoyed some Hokey Pokey ice cream with Hokey Pokey chocolate syrup on it.

Today I also picked up ingredients for pancakes.

Dinner with Keith & Janet

Tonight we were invited to dinner with Malin's friends in Wellington. They have a beautiful house on Mt. Victoria with stunning views of the city and the bay. It was a fantastic night. It's been an incredibly long time since I've had a meal like that and sadly it will be a long time until I have one again. We started off just chatting and having a drink over some cheese and crackers alongside some chips and dip. Keith had just built an outdoor brick pizza oven so we had a homemade pizza from the oven. Although the pizza didn't go as well as planned as it was only the second run at using the oven. The pizza(s) ended up being finished off in the normal oven. After the pizza appetizer and the chips/crackers we moved on to sausage and lamb chops for the main course with a nice glass of wine. Towards the end of dinner it began raining and we moved inside for dessert which consisted of a platter of fresh fruit with chocolate sauce to dip in alongside a bowl of ice cream. We were all sufficiently full at the end of all of this. During the night we also had the pleasure of seeing a spectacular rainbow out in the bay. You were able to see both ends of the rainbow which was pretty cool. Around 10 we said our goodbyes and the four of us walked back down to the hostel. It was a awesome night.

The Botanical Gardens

This morning we were picked up at around 11 by friends of Malin's family who live in Wellington. They took us to the Wellington Cable Car and we took the cable car up to the top of the hill/mountain (depending where you are from). At the top we commenced a walk through an extensive series of gardens and wooded areas and saw all sorts of delightful flowers and other wild life. We also saw more ducks. Ducks never cease to provide entertainment.





After the walk we went to a cafe at the bottom just past a magnificent garden of roses. I had a nice toasted sandwich for lunch and a beer which got partially spilled by the aggressive wind. Malin's friends were nice enough to treat us to lunch. In addition to this they invited us over to their house on Mt.Victoria tomorrow for lunch.

Te Papa!

Today the three of us went to the famous "Te Papa" museum which means "Earth Mother" in Maori. The museum has a variety of exhibits that highlight New Zealand both past and present as well as a lot of stuff surrounding the plants and animals of New Zealand. In addition to all of this the Te Papa museum recently acquired a colossal squid to display. It is the only one on display in the world.



The museum had plenty of entertaining things to see and do including a simulated earthquake in a little house. Ironically there actually was a small earthquake in Wellington today.



After the museum we went to Subway for lunch where I had a Roast Lamb sub. It was quite tasty and distinctly New Zealand. I washed it down with a Coke. I love Coke.




For dinner we had home-made Swedish Meatballs.

Boxing Day Dinner

Tonight we decided that we should go out for a nice boxing day dinner. Initially the plan had been to go out for a Christmas dinner but apparently everything closes on Christmas as far as restaurants go. Jennie had found a nice looking Chinese restaurant in one of her previous scouting missions called "Dragon" so we opted to go there. Upon entering the restaurant we immediately became aware that we were the only non Chinese people in the entire restaurant but we decided to stay anyways despite feeling slightly out of place. For dinner I had sweet and sour pork as per usual and a Steinlager (because Heneiken was $9 a bottle). The girls split a vegetable platter and a crab. I ended up having some crab and vegetables too because there was so much food. In addition to this I further worked on my chopstick skills.



The real fun started with dessert though. We ended up ordering about half the dessert menu. We all saw stuff we liked and all ended up ordering something different so we could try each others. I ordered a Banana Split, Jennie ordered Coconut Jelly and Malin ordered Lychee Ice cream. Being a Chinese restaurant they managed to ruin the one healthy aspect of the Banana Split by BATTERING AND DEEP FRYING THE BANANA. Regardless of this it still tasted awesome.





After dinner we headed back to Basement bar for a round of Jagerbombs before heading back up stairs.

LIMBO CHAMPION OF THE WORLD/BAR

Last night involved drinking and limbo. Although admittedly there was more drinking than limbo. Limbo however was the clear highlight of the night. Initially I wasn't onboard with the idea, mostly because I couldn't be assed to leave the couch I was sitting on. Regardless I got dragged up into the limbo crowd of probably a good twenty people or so. Now admittedly I am not that tall but in the beginning either everyone really sucked or was just really really tall because the numbers dropped quite rapidly. Before long I found myself in the final too. Somehow the competition was down to me and Jennie - my much much shorter room mate. Initially they dropped the bar really low and both of us failed three times before we started making it again. I was the first to fail again but Jennie failed it to so I was sparred and got another round. After another round or two Jennie failed and all I had to do was get under the bar and I won. Somehow I managed to get under bar. I proceeded to do a victory cheer on the other side and gave Jennie a hug and spun her around probably inducing whiplash in the process. For my effort I won a bunch of Southern Comfort branded things. I won a deck of cards, a wrist sweatband and a hat. I also won a grass skirt which I wore for the remainder of the evening.






Following limbo some more drinks were had and I did what could loosely be described as dancing which is always entertaining. After a bit of dancing I gave up and just sat on the couch and chatted with Jennie while we watched Malin tear up the dance floor with a guy from Chile.






The night was a blast and I have a great memory of my night as lord of the limbo!

Merry Christmas again for those of you on the other side of the dateline!

Christmas Day in Wellington!

Christmas Day in Wellington started off with a nice breakfast of fruit, toast and a hard boiled egg.




After breakfast we decided to do a walk around the harbor and see some of the sights. The city was mostly a ghost town because everyone was theoretically at home with family. We walked for quite awhile and saw all sorts of stuff along the water. Eventually we stopped at Starbucks for a drink. While we were at Starbucks I was approached by a fellow Canadian who presumably married a Kiwi (the gentleman she was with appeared to be here husband). She was from Alberta she said it was always nice to see fellow Canadians and wished us a Merry Christmas.









After walking around the harbour area we went to hang out on the beach for a little bit before I had to head back to the hostel to make all my Christmas phone calls. There was a surprising number of people out on the beach on Christmas Day but I guess some people maybe do it as a tradition simply because they can due to the weather. The weather by the way was gorgeous on Christmas Day. It was around 20C with clear blue skies.





Dinner didn't go quite as planned but we salvaged the meal and ended up enjoying a very pleasant dinner none the less. Our initial plan had been to go out for dinner but unfortunately it turned out that most restaurants in the city are closed on Christmas Day. The only ones we found to be open were the fancy five star hotel restaurants. The girls went out to get groceries for dinner while I made phone calls. They came back with this canned chicken sauce stuff that apparently they realized didn't come with chicken but required you to add it yourself at some point so they bought sausages to use instead. We ended up having the sauce with sausages on rice and it was very good and very filling.

Christmas Eve In Wellington!

Christmas Eve in Wellington was very quiet but quite enjoyable none the less. We went out and rounded up groceries for dinner. Before making dinner we worked on making Rocky Road which consists of chocolate, marshmallows, peanuts, pistachios and toffee. The chocolate is melted and all of it is mixed together and then left to set in the fridge.







After we wrapped up making, setting and starting on consuming the Rocky Road we moved on to making dinner. For dinner we made pasta and salad. This was quite tasty and served as an excellent Christmas dinner.






After this I was introduced to a Swedish Christmas tradition. Every Christmas a good portion of the country tunes in to watch this one hour collection of Disney shorts. Jennie had it on DVD so three of us piled on to one of the empty beds in our room and watched it on my laptop while eating popcorn, strawberries and Rocky Road.






MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE!