Friday, March 1, 2019
Woke up this morning in New Zealand’s largest (and capital) city. Wellington!
Where am I?
So, what’s been happening?
Originally, I tried to schedule a craft beer tour. As it turned out, there were not enough people signed up for the tour and thus I found myself on my own.
Fortunately, the company that offered the tour was, at least, able to send me in the direction of a very good pub in the downtown area. Since the ship was offering free shuttle buses, and because one of the stops on that shuttle bus’s route was just a couple of blocks away from the recommended pub, I hopped on the shuttle.
Now, I don’t have a lot of photos of Wellington because I wasn’t really on a tour. Also, my main focus today was to try out some local Wellington craft beer, I didn’t really do any sightseeing. Additionally, Wellington is the national capital and it just looks like so many other large cities. In fact, Wellington struck me as something like San Francisco but with roads that curve every which way instead of roads that run straight (some would say San Francisco roads run straight up and down.)
After walking a couple of blocks I found the Fork and Brewer pub. The pub is in an old building downtown. It really doesn’t look like much, but they had a very large selection of beers (and also wines and a full bar.)
The bartender asked me what I would like and I told him I was not from the area and had no idea which beers I might like based upon their names alone. I asked him to choose four of the hoppiest beers he had. In a few minutes I was presented with four 150ml glasses, each filled with one of their home grown IPAs.
The Alpha Greek was my favorite, with a front to back tasting experience similar to what I would expect from a SoCal IPA. The Zeus Juice was a bit too flowery-tasting for me. I-P-Yay! and Feature Creep were both very good, but just couldn’t match up to the overall “goodness” of the Alpha Greek.
After I finished my flight of beers (and an Angus Cheeseburger and fries) I needed to move along. This was because Fork & Brewer was supposed to have fast internet (as well as food and beverages) but on this particular day the Internet was out. It seems I wasn’t having much luck in achieving my goals in Wellington.
BTW, the beer flight was $16 and the burger was $21. That’s $37 for 1.25 pints of beer, a burger and fries. Now after taking the exchange rate into account, that’s still $25.15 US. New Zealand in not an inexpensive place to live.
Leaving the pub, I started walking in the general direction of the shuttle bus stop. Along the way I found, Coco’s Bar and Grill. I stopped briefly to see if they had free internet, and they did! So, I went inside, ordered a pint of beer (a delicious APA this time) and sat outside by the sidewalk to enjoy my beer and being digitally connected to the world.
And, WOW!, was I connected! The wi-fi speed completely blew me away. I was now enjoying upload and download speeds almost 1/15th of what I have at home and it felt just super! And, it was easily 10 times as fast as the ship’s internet for which I paid dearly. So I used this “beer break” to upload photos and videos so that I could continue my posts on this site and keep you entertained and following along in my adventures.
So, I did all of the uploading of photos and downloading of system and app updates that I could fit into the time remaining. I did get back to the shuttle well before the service ended for the day, and in no time at all I was back aboard the Amsterdam.
Today I visited Wellington, just about the southernmost city on the North Island. Tomorrow, I visit Picton, just about the northernmost city on the South Island. Picton is a short visit (dock at 8am, cast off at 1:30pm.) We’ll see how much sightseeing I get down there.
Until then, adios!
