Planes, Ferries, Automobiles (and bikes!)

We have been having so much fun the past few days! After leaving the Franz Josef Glacier we headed up the coast to Nelson where we spent the night before heading back up to the North Island for a day. The next morning we woke up and headed to Picton in order to catch a flight to Wellington. We had a bit of time to kill, so we went exploring on the beach first.


 

Then we headed to the airport to catch our flight. The ferry from Picton to Wellington takes over 3 hours each way and because we were only going for one day we decided to take a 15 minute flight there and the ferry back.

This is our death trap...I mean plane. It sat 13 including the pilot and copilot.



I was pretty freaked out the whole time, but I have to admit that the scenery was unbelievable.




When we would fly over the clouds, I was noticing rainbows reflecting on the tops so I wanted to get a picture of it. This is what I wound up with. So cool!


Once we checked into our hostel, we headed out the Te Papa National Museum before it closed and then went on a food crawl in the Cuba district. The closest thing we could think of to compare it to would be Telegraph Ave in Berkeley.


We had appetizers at one place, pizza at another and pavlova at the 3rd (which did not compare to the one we had at Hopper's at all).
The next morning we woke up and headed on a 2 hour bus tour of the city. Because we had to catch the ferry that afternoon we did not have a lot of time to explore the city, so we thought the touristy bus trip would be the best use of our time. Here we are on the top of Mt. Victoria.

And at Old St. Paul's. 

Then we headed to catch the ferry that would take us back to Picton through Cook's Straight. This is the back of the boat...Nelly asked why it smelled like a petting zoo. Look closely.




We then made the quick drive into Blenheim where we have been for the past few days. Yesterday we took a bike trip wine tasting through the Marlborough region which is famous for the Sauvignon Blancs. It had poured the night before but we got lucky with beautiful weather.



There were two other couples our age we met and spent the day with, both from Australia. We watched the couple on the left get engaged in one of the vineyards so we had quite the day and night celebrating with them!


After our bike trip we all met up later in town for dinner, quite sore I might add from 7 hours of bike riding! We had a great time with them and hope to meet up when we are in Australia. This photo is from the restaurant where we met for pre dinner drinks.


And that brings us to today where we are headed down the east coast to Kaikora for the remainder of our time here before we head to Australia on Monday. I can't believe our time here in New Zealand is almost over and that we have been gone nearly a month.

Location:Picton, Wellington and Blenheim