Ben and Rachel Travels

The Land of Hobbit Feet

2007-04-11T02:36:00.000-07:00

I just couldn’t help but to title this piece “The Land of Hobbit Feet.” I’m not saying New Zealanders are an extremely short people with huge feet, BUT a surprisingly large number of people seem to prefer walking down the street barefoot.

It was one of the first things I noticed when we arrived to New Zealand. We were waiting at a bus stop to take our first trip into the city of Wellington and a college-aged girl walked up in bare feet and got onto the bus. As we walked around exploring the city that first day, I continued to see a number of people walking around with no shoes on. I became fascinated by it, I mean, I had never noticed people in public, going into stores or restaurants in the US without shoes. It’s clearly frowned upon in the States (ie, “No Shoes, No Shirt, No Service”).

Now, to be fair, it is only a small percentage of people who walk down the street with no shoes on, but the number is enough to notice. And even more funny is to see people walking in bare feet and holding their shoes — often, the shoes are flip-flops or sneakers and not what I would consider uncomfortable to be walking in.

The best example I can give happened about a month ago. I was hard at work in the Wellington Public Library (love working there — they have wireless Internet, outlets for power and even a great café for when I get hungry or need a caffeine boost). The security guy walked by and noticed a pair of boots on the floor at a nearby table. He proceeded to ask everyone in the area if the boots belonged to him or her, but ended up not finding the owner. I had to chuckle to myself because only in New Zealand would someone walk into the library with shoes on, take them off, then exit the library and probably walk all the way home without realizing they once were wearing shoes that day!

Sadly, now that autumn has set in and winter is quickly approaching, I see fewer and fewer people walking around with no shoes on. My little game of spotting bare feet is not as active as it once was, but I do still get a surprise every now and then, and the game continues.

Life Without Pennies

2007-03-24T21:33:00.000-07:00

Hey, how’s everybody doing? Long time no blog, we’re sorry about that. We’ll try to be better about it from now on. So, I guess we’ve been living in our apartment for almost two months now. That’s pretty crazy. It’s flown by.

Since our last blog we’ve completely furnished our apartment. It’s great, we love it. It lacks some wall hangings, but we just got a clock so there’s a start.

Summer has come to an end down here and it’s fall now. The weather hasn’t changed much, we’ve had a couple rainy days and it’s getting darker a lot earlier now, but so far so good.

I really like the money system down here. There are no pennies! There isn’t even a 5 cent coin. They have 10, 20, and 50 cent coins. Then 1 and 2 dollar coins, no singles. Then the actual bills start at 5 dollars, everything is the same going up from there I guess. The bills are pretty fancy, very colorful. They feel smooth and clean too. I’m sure they’re not actually cleaner, but they just feel like they are compared to the U.S. paper money.

After two months I think we’re getting into the city’s rhythm. We’ve joined the Wellington Film Society, which screens free movies every Monday, we have favorite restaurants now, and we even have library cards!

The biggest news is that we’ve made a couple friends! Like actual friends, another couple that we go out with and they have even come over a couple times….those kind of friends. Roanna and Julian, they’re great. They are really helping us feel at home down here.

Again, we will be blogging more often now that we’ve settled in and are starting to relax for a change. Hope everyone is doing well, Talk to you later.

Travel Report #1

2007-02-10T21:11:00.000-08:00

Well, we made it to Wellington! After a week in Hawaii, a long flight down under, a night in Sydney Australia, another day of dragging luggage through airports, two nights in a fancy bed & breakfast on the outskirts of Wellington, half a week in a hostel on a crappy bed, we finally found and moved into our new apartment.

It's been a crazy couple of weeks. Hawaii is amazingly beautiful. We were staying in the very touristy Waikiki but rented a jeep so we could explore the island of Oahu. That's the way to do it. We were our own tour guides, and did quite a good job if I do say so myself. Hawaii was great but all we could think of was our soon to be new home.

After our week in paradise, we boarded our plane to Australia and waved good-bye to the U-S-of-A. The ten hour daytime flight flew by, no pun intended. I think the fact that I didn't try to sleep and just kept myself busy reading, watching my video iPod, and playing DS help. Most flights I try to sleep during and I think with all the waking up that happens it makes a flight seem longer.

Anyway, we arrived in Sydney, had to uncheck our checked baggage, and drag them to our hotel for the night. After a quick night sleep, we went back to the airport, had to recheck our luggage, and hop on our next flight to Auckland, New Zealand. I was a short 3-hour flight and I barely remember it next to our 10-hour one.

What we didn't know prior to this trip was that every time we flew into a new country we had to uncheck our checked bags, run them through customs then recheck them again. We arrived in Auckland where we only had 1 hour until our next flight — thank you very much, Orbitz. The only reason this was a big deal for us was because we were carrying what we need to last us at least a year which was crammed into three giant suitcase, two L. L. Bean backpacks on our backs, Rachel's carry on, and my beloved Wii laptop bag (thank you very much Daniel Kayser). So, with all this stuff, we waited in a huge customs line, and then had to run from the international terminal to the domestic one where we recheck most of our stuff with only about 10 minutes to get on our final flight.

The flight from Auckland to Wellington was under an hour. Most of the flight was spent reveling in the fact that we were almost there — our journey was almost over. We landed and for once didn't have to go through customs! We calmly got our luggage, found a taxi, and found ourselves an incredibly relaxing bed and breakfast over looking part of the Wellington Bay. We basically had our own little studio apartment off the side of these really nice people's home.

After two tranquil nights spent in a beautiful Wellington suburb we proceeded to our hostel near the center of Wellington. It was nice for a hostel but I think we were just getting tired of living out of our suitcases. That and the miserable excuse for the bed didn't help.

Outside of that, the city is fantastic. It has all the makings of a city but is extraordinarily green. Everyone is ultra-friendly and loves to talk. We are having some trouble understanding people at times. It's not too bad, but sometimes they talk so fast we have a hard time keeping up.

Once we got our cell phones working down here we starting hitting the apartment scene hard. We decided to sacrifice space for a newer better-kept apartment. After only about 3 days of intense hiking about the city and internet digging we found one we really liked. A few hours after viewing it, we got a call back saying we could have. The very next day we went to sign the lease and moved in hours later.

It felt so good to leave the hostel for what will be our last stop for a while. The past few days hasn't really let up for much rest yet. We've been walking all over town trying to put together our apartment. We ordered a bed at one store, it'll hopefully be here within the week, ordered a couch at another, that came Saturday, we found an Office Max and ordered a computer desk and chair, we found a hardware store and built this whole wardrobe thingy. Slowly but surely our apartment is coming together. The less we have to spend walking around looking for things and actually in it, the more it feels like home.

Welcome to Our Travel Blog

2007-02-10T19:18:00.000-08:00

We'd like to introduce our new travel blog! Aside from the pictures that we'll continue to post on our main site, we thought it might be nice to have a place where the two of us can post thoughts about our time in Wellington and wherever else we end up traveling to over the next year.

Now that we are getting settled, we'll be using this blog and also updating our site more often. We've been so focused on getting an apartment and then finding stuff to fill the apartment, that we haven't gotten to leisurely explore Wellington yet. We could give you suggestions on where to buy furniture and housewares, but that's about it. I know that I'm definitely looking forward to being able to wander the city without being rushed!

Anyway, check back often because we'll be posting more. Also, feel free to leave comments if you are inspired to!