Fare-Well-ington, NZ

Mousehead at Te Papa (Museum of NZ) with penguin
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Wellington, again. This time we planned to stay a while longer, enjoy the city that Ben lived in, and see friends and family at our leisure. But we spent a few extra days in Blenheim so that didn't quite work out. Frantically arriving on an early morning ferry, we rushed to the Vietnamese Embassy to apply for visas.

After getting that process in motion, we could comfortably enjoy ourselves. We visited Scots College, the all-boys school where Ben learned how to wear a blazer with matching tie, and became confident in his inability to communicate with girls. We caught up with some former teachers of his who were nice enough to show us around the awesome new science labs (amazing how you can appreciate school when you are no longer in it). We celebrated ANZAC day by enjoying free parking downtown, and spent a leisurely afternoon at Te Papa, a super cool museum with a ton of wonderful exhibits and a barbershop group performing for the holiday. We ate at Burger Fuel, our favourite burger chain in the Southern Hemisphere. We met up with an old friend of Ben's from band who took us up to Mt. Victoria for a lovely nighttime view. We ate some feijoas (FINALLY) although we were told they were terribly unripe, but we enjoyed them anyway. We climbed Johnston Hill, picked up our fancy new Vietnamese visas, and then we headed out of town back up to Ashhurst and Palmerston North.

Ben and Anna
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Here we visited briefly with Ben's aunts and uncles, staying just long enough to return all the wonderful items they loaned us for the journey (including the essential tent and car -- THANK YOU SO MUCH), and then we left on foot, once again vagabonds, forced to take the bus with the common folk.

Back in Wellington we did some laundry and met up for afternoon coffee with Ben's old headmaster at Scots who is now into politics and is still a very good chap. For our last night we enjoyed some Tui, some burgers, and some good friends. Did we mention how heavily we relied on James for these past few days? Aside from staying at his parents' house, he was also driving us around, entertaining us, and just generally being really nice. Plus he drove us to the airport at 4:00 am, after we spilled hot coffee on him. Now that's what I call a good friend.