....And I've been doing it wrong the whole trip??? Now you finally tell me??
Travel always sounds so exotic, especially when you take a long plane ride to get there. And a two or three week vacation is usually packed so full, long days, lots of activities and moving from place to place. In other words, every day is a day of nothing but highlights...the major museums, the thrill activities and a fancy dinner out.
But a two month vacation is quite different. It is closer to regular life with one or two good surprises each day. Like our drive to Blenheim, a sleepover, and a ferry ride from Picton to Wellington on Tuesday to Wednesday. It was really nice and I could describe what we did, the drive, the vineyards we visited, the dinner, etc. But this blog is meant to be more than just a travelogue. It's about observing and learning, looking at things with distance and perspective.
And traveling to a very far away place that is not so different than where you are from means you have to 'see' smaller things, like how often people say things are 'brilliant' or 'flash' (flash means great or rad or cool and I totally think it is adoptable and could be a trend starter in the U.S...or maybe it already is and I am too old to be that cutting edge on pop culture). Or notice that the national shoes are flip flops and almost every other store in all of New Zealand is an REI look alike.......really, like 6 outdoor equipment stores on one block?
But even more, it is not feeling like you are getting cheated out of a day of vacation because you are not doing much. Sometimes our days are more like the Sunday morning you are sitting around and decide to take a drive to New Hope for a nice lunch, or the Thursday afternoon you sneak off to a movie. Slow travel doesn't have just the wows but also the little pleasures.
Really big ferry....to cross "one of the most dangerous and unpredictable
waters in the world"......the Cook Strait.
Today after last night in a semi-bad hotel (it did have five stars...from somewhere or someone who was blind) that Steve booked, we drove to Picton to catch the ferry to Wellington, the easiest and nicest way to move from one island to the other, especially when someone (Steve) books into first class, the private lounge with wine and beer, and food, and comfy big chairs next to the window. And all you have to do it sit, relax, read a book, catch up with email and watch the water go by.
And then there is the lovely surprise, thank you technology, of getting a call in the middle of the crossing, from London, with Shelby and David and Mark and Mandy on speaker phone, just to say hi and catch us up on the goings on in England. With the wind in my ear, I am sure I missed half of what they were saying but I loved the half I got. They had celebrated their engagement with a soirée at the Kings where Shelby probably forgot more names of people than she remembered meeting. No real chance to talk anymore about weddings and plans, but we'll get there...
We arrived in Wellington to sunshine and wind; they do call it Windy Wellington. I forced Steve to do a walking tour to get the lay of the land and a few stories about this small (400,000 pop.) city on the big bay.
In 90 minutes we saw much of the city and all of the places we will check out inside tomorrow. But after ten days on the South Island, Wellington feels big, after all they have some buildings that are over six stories tall and the stores were open past five o'clock. Another hotel, another map to carry, another place to explore...it's still not boring, I still have the perfect travel partner who is willing to clock over 1,500 kilometers in ten days to do the trip I planned and keep going on those walking tours he doesn't really like. And we both still love our regular, special days on the road.
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