March in Wellington

Paul (Debi's English friend) stayed with us for ten days. He cooked and cleaned and put up with our girl fun (like watching multiple eposiodes of Sex and the City). We were sad to see him go. He is off to Australia for the year.

Debi in her bedroom








A night on the town! It was a classic Saturday night. We hit up a couple of bars since you don't pay cover in this city. It ended with Jen and our new friend Simon singing 'Rent' in the street!




Jen on our balcony

















A commom sign seen on Wellington coast





Mrs Kitchen and Debi on the ferry over to day's bay





Ma and Pa Kitchen took Jen and I out to Days Bay to spend time at their rented cottage






Dancing it up with our new friend Simon!








Debi took a bus tour of Wellington on one of her days off. One of the stops was Mt Victoria which offers beautiful views of Wellington city!









We've become amazing cook over here. This is one of our delicious meals. It is tomato/pesto angel hair pasta dish.




Mmmm...nothing like a kebab after the bar. That is right, the drunk food doesn't include pizza...only kebab's.



Sunset from our apartment balcony

Auckland and St Paddy's Day

St Paddy's day - kiwi style! Bono or no Bono we were determined to make the most of our week-end in Auckland. We didn't waste any time getting into the spitit of the day on the plane puting on green eye shadow and drinking wine. A drink in the air's like 3 on land (or so i've heard...)

Once we met up with Yvonne we headed out on the town. We went to Danny Doolan's in downtown Auckland then headed on to a few other places. We ended the night at our new favourite late night stop - BK. Whopper jr with cheese no better way to end a night.

Saturday we got up and had a delicious Yvonne brekkie before heading out on a ferry to Waiheke Island off the coast of Auckland. We ended up exploring the island for awhile and eating lunch at a beach side cafe. So nice although not so good for the fair skinned in the group. I (kitch) got another nasty sun burn. Luckily Yvonne's house has an aloe plant out front so I was able to aloe up before heading out saturday night.

We went out downtown again saturday night. We had Thai food with Yvonne and her friends Will and Beven, then went out for delicious cocktails. Debi even got her own drink invented for her - the debi - citrus free and super delicious.

Well we may have paid thousands of dollars to escape winter but we couldn't go without snow for the whole time! We went to minus 5 - the Auckland ice bar. Very cool (literally). We got big coats, boots and mittens and the entire bar is made of ice, the stools, the glasses, the bar. It only fuelled my obsession with things made of ice - still determined to make it to the ice hotel in Quebec one day.

Sunday we decided to do the touristy thing with Yvonne and our tour guide Will (team will!) We started with brunch at the sky tower (every city's got a tower). From there we went to the aquarium where we rode the penguin ride several time (well we wanted to sit in the front row!) We ended the day at Mission Bay Beach for dinner and Movenpicks ice cream on the beach. Finally we made it to the bus station for our 11 hour night bus (night buses always seem like a good idea at the time) We pulled back into Wellington at 6am and headed straight home to our beds for a few more hours of comfortable sleep.

The Kitchen's take on NZ

Well finally a visitor that makes sense! Ma and Pa Kitchen came to wellington on their month long adventure to Australia and New Zealand. It was lots of fun having them here and showing them around our new home city (plus it was pretty fun having someone else paying for dinner!)

I took my parents arounnd the city to some key wellington attractions, including the cable car, tours of parliament and Te Papa Museum. We also went for dinner at Wellington's only floating restaurant - the Tugboat.


My Work! I work at Kathmandu, selling travel and adventure equipment. Gotta work the staff discount for my adventures - here and there.

The Bay of Islands

Another month, another trip for us. This time to the Bay of Islands in Northern New Zealand. Deb went up first and met her friend from womens college, Yvonne, in Auckland and the two of them took a tour up to Paihia, where we were staying. Kitch, being the working woman she is now had to work so she headed up thursday night and rented a car to join the fun. We stayed at the pipi patch hostel - which featured a luxury pool.

On Friday we took a day trip up to the very northern tip of New Zealand - Cape Reinga. On the way we stopped at a ancient kauri forest. There trees grow for thousands of years. This one is about 1000 years old.



Cape Reinga is the northern most point of new zealand - and the closest we're going to be to home for a while. It's the gateway to the spiritual world for the Maori people and also the spot where the tasman sea meets the pacific ocean.

Well another trip - another adventure. This time we went sand boarding down the sand dunes in Te Paki. It's like toboganning down sand - head first! Yeah scary times...although in the end super fun.

Debi with our rental car!!! Okay just kidding. We drove back from the cape along 90 ninety mile beach - definitley the coolest highway we've ever been on. We came across this mercedes which has been slowly sinking into the ocean for the last 6 weeks since the driver got a little over confident about driving on the beach close to high tide - oops!


We got back to Paihia and hit the town. We found 2 for 1 wine and being the classy girls we are weren't afraid to do a little double fisting! We then went in search of live music and went to see a cover band - the hit list - that deb and yvonne had discovered on thier first night there. They were really good but the sketchy local scene was a bit much for us so we put our dancing shoes on and went to the saltwater lodge where we met this guy from Idaho (Ihado - no you da ho) who knew more canadian geography then we did.




Saturday we headed back in our little rental car Dolores. Deb and kitch both became experienced drivers on the left (despite some initial nervousness and one or two close calls) Luckily we had Madonna's immaculate collection cd to get us through the stressful moments. We took our time driving home and made a few cool stops, including the world famous toilets in kawakawa and the awesome wharangei falls. These falls might look really beautiful for swimming in - and that's what kitch thought too - until she tried to go swimming and got bitten by something that looked like a dinosaur...yup if it looks prehistoric the rule is get out of the water. And so she did. From there we went to do some caving but decided that our jandels (that's kiwi for flip flops) were not quite the footwear for deep cave exploration.
We then headed back to auckland and said good-bye to Yvonne (for two weeks - we're going back to do st patty's day with her in auckland).