We still don’t have internet outside of internet cafes downtown, so my posts and communications are going to be a little light until we get that figured out. To start where we left off – the villa-louis comment was uncalled for. Upon venturing outside of our hotel room, I found a plaque that said the Shepherd’s Arms Hotel and Tavern is one of the oldest in Wellington. It first opened in 1880 as a tavern where the shepherds would come to relax at night. At that time it was on the far edge of town, but the city has expanded so much it’s now in the middle of the greater Wellington area – far away from any shepherds. None of that is super important on our “learning to be a kiwi” topic, but its good history and what not.
Friday morning we ventured off into town and found a nice internet cafe. Awaiting us were email responses to inquiries about flats and apartments around town that we were going to look at. We looked at over a dozen or so places online and emailed or called them to see if they were open to couples. Apparently there are a lot of landlords in Wellington (maybe in New Zealand overall) so work into their leases that none of the rooms can be rented to men. What the fuck?! Well that shot down half of the options, so we walked around town and looked at 4 places in person. None of them were super nice, but they were liveable.
Wellington is a city that’s in a valley on a bay. All of the suburbs are on the hills, and each suburb is a separate hill. Now I’m not talking little Wisconsin hills, these are like building suburbs in the Himalayas. When I say “we walked around town” I mean we hiked up and down Mt. Everest. It was hell. We went back to the hotel debating between two places – one flat in Hataitai (a short bus ride out of the main city) that was a single bedroom, shared kitchen / living / bath, and one in Kelburn that was a room in an apartment with 3 girls.
Saturday’s newspaper contains all the classifieds for the week. When we woke up it was not at our door so we waited. After an hour or so I got impatient, walked downstairs to the front desk, and stole a copy out of the bag sitting on a bench. We circled several places and began calling them. I wanted to start with the ones in the suburb next to our hotel, assuming that would be the easiest. Turns out it was not. The climb up makes Mt. Everest look like a bunny hill. The first place on the hill was a dump, so we continued on. Wellington is known for being windy. It’s like nature’s wind tunnel. The winds just whip through the gap between the north and south island and take babies out of their mother’s hands. So the hike further up to second place was damn windy, and I’m surprised we made it. It’s also cold. I think it was 12 degrees Celsius that morning – you do the math, and then factor in hurricane strength winds. The second place was even worse, BUT it was owned by a management company. So we talked to the lady, and had her show us a place downtown so we got a free ride down the mountain. We were kinda curious about the place downtown, but mainly wanted the free ride. It worked out great.
Once downtown I was ready to give up and pick one of the two favourites from last night. Amy wanted to keep going, so we agreed to rent a car. An hour or so later we had a car and were driving up another mountain. When we got to the place we both walked in and fell in love. It was a furnished studio apartment in Kelburn, with a new modern kitchen / living area, and modern bedroom area. The apartment is actually the basement of someone’s house. They weren’t using it so they fixed it all up and started renting it out. At first they landlords wanted to wait until Sunday to give it to us as they had promised to show it to another couple the next day, but as they talked to us and I worked my Zach-Magic (copyrighted / trademarked / restricted / classified) they decided “Well, if you guys want it it’s yours.” We said yes. I’ll link to some pictures of it at the bottom of this post if anyone is interested.
Sunday morning we checked out of the hotel and drove up the mountain to our new home. The place is right next to the Wellington botanical gardens, which I’ll end up walking through to get to work if I work downtown. We went to the grocery store and bought some stuff, and then just relaxed for the evening. We did go on a quick jaunt through the gardens, and let me tell you – they are B-E-A-Utiful! Class-A job Wellington, you did well.
Today we’re going to head into town and go to an internet cafe to apply for some jobs online. We don’t have internet yet in the apartment – that’s also on our list of things to do.
I wish you all were here with us – I miss all my friends and family. I hope everything is going well in the greater Madison area, Kailua, Apple Valley, the greater Phucket area, Idaho, Arizona, Texas, Washington state, Bahrain, Belleville (it’s pretty far away – admit it J), and anywhere else not in the quad-hemisphere area.
-Zach
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