Fairies and Ferries

Alison:  Windy Welly! (true).

We had a great city time in Wellington. We arrived, and, as usual, had no place to stay and barely any plans. Caryn was in that hungry mood she gets where she can't think properly or make any decisions.

Then she went and bought a mocha in a sweet as travel mug.

Suddenly...
plans!plans!PLANS! in all one breath she said something like: "we should go to that hostel, then go to the opera tonight; tomorrow the city and a play, and then no hostel that night - take the night ferry to the south island and sleep in the car."

My jaw dropped.

So, that is what we did! And it was wonderful.

Caryn:  Wellington has a pretty strong arts scene (from what we could tell from our 2 day whirlwind), so it's fitting that we got to take in a play and go to the opera.  The opera we saw was Handel's Xerxes.  It was translated from Italian to English on a little classy screen....

Alison: It turns out it was basically a chick flick.We never would have known!

Caryn: The opera was really good.  We sat next to a friendly lady from Austria- who began humming along to the first song (at which point i was like "if she does this i'm going to have to change seats...).  luckily, it was just the first song she hummed to- she remarked to us in the intermission that she sang it at a wedding.  Which is slightly weird because the words are as follows: 'No tree's shade ever was more serene, dear and lovely" (on and on it goes- it is basically a love song for a tree).

Alison: I can relate.

Caryn:  The play that we saw "Fairy Stories" was... so so.  It had been brought back after 15 years to celebrate this theatre's 30th anniversary... or maybe for the out games which were at Wellington at the time.  Whichever it was, Alison remarked "I hope they don't have the same actors from 15 years ago, ha ha".  Well, turns out..... they most likely were.  And it turned out to be a bunch of short drama type things, more like a dance recital- no talking, but the dancing wasn't good enough to be featured as such.  We're opera snobs now anyways... (jk)

We also went to the museum and cruised through it in 2 hours, visiting floor 4 on recommendation of the coat check man.  Apparently it takes 2 1/2 days to see everything in this museum!!  The limited amount we saw, we liked.

Then it was off on the night ferry to the South Island!

Note: If you take the night ferry, not only will you get no sleep, you will also not see any of the scenery that is described as "dazzling" and will feel like your $255 dollars could be better spent during the day.