Wellington

This week Torre had orientation with the NZ Locums agency in Wellington so we had the opportunity to drive south and see more of the island. Wellington is a small city on the southern coast of the North Island and feels about the size of Boston. It's a lot cooler here than in Levin and doesn't have the “small town” feel that Boston does but the views of the homes on the coast looks like what I would imagine the homes on the Greek Islands to look like. Downtown Wellington is packed with high rise offices and apartment building, a cafe on every corner and lots and lots of shopping. Turkish, Sushi and Sandwich shops are the favorites here and the Kiwis love their espresso!

A few Wellington highlights:

One night while strolling down Cuba Street we found Wasabi Sushi. It is a generally normal Sushi restaurant, except we'd never seen service provided with such a spin! The restaurant is pretty long and narrow and has a long, lean oval shaped table in the center of the room that seats about 25 people. Rolling around the top of the table is a conveyor belt filled with all different colored plates of sushi! All you do it sit down and start shopping to your hearts content! At the end of the meal the server comes over, sees how many of which colored plates you have, rings you up and you are out the door. We'll be back. :)

For those of you who have never experience the Magnum Ice Cream bar, I'm sad to say that you've been missing out. From what I can tell they've been available in other countries for years but just started making themselves known in the states recently. Get one! I know you'll love it. :) They have a promotion going right now....1 in 6 people win a FREE Magnum! We got a Honey Suckle Vanilla Magnum the other night our way back to the hotel and wouldn't you know it WE WON!!! I rarely win anything so this was a lovely surprise! Pictured is our prize. :)

Yesterday Torre finished his meetings at 2pm so we went to the Te Papa Museum on the harbor. It's a big beautiful museum that's free to the public. Torre was extremely excited to find that it's the only museum in the world to have on display a Colossal Squid! He had actually watched the documentary on this exact squid not that long ago. It was captured live on a fishing vessel, frozen to be preserved and then slowly thawed so scientist could study it until it began to break down and had to be preserved for display in the museum. A Colossal Squid's eye is the size of a soccer ball, it's tentacles have hooks on them and spin in circles and it has this giant bird like beak that it uses to grab and eat it's prey. Gross.