Wellington: "It ain't called Windy Wellington for nothing..."

You may have felt, only very subtly of course, that we had our fights with the weather here in New Zealand. In Wellington, NZ's capital, the problem wasn't just rain and cold, we also had to deal with the really strong winds that are apparently typical for this area.And we learnt that quite quick: Arrving in Wellington the wind didn't exactly open the car doors for us, it basically ripped them out of our hands (and almost out of the car, at least that's what it felt like).
Apart from the wind Wellington was quite beautiful, even more so compared to the only other big NZ city we had seen so far, Auckland. Unfortunately though our "classic NZ sentence" applies to Welington just as well as to our previous NZ stops: "The weather ruined pretty much any chance of outdoor activities." So all that was left was the usual bad-weather-programm: Sightseeing throughout town during the few dry hours the weather allows and during the rain periods shop for some more warm clothes and visit the local museum. In the case of Wellington the must-see-museum is the NZ national museum Te Papa and it's definitely worth going there. And on top of really good exhibitions it's also free, gotta love it. Our stay in Wellington also once more proved the german proverb that the world is basically just a village, meaning that no matter where you are, you'll meet people from home everywhere. That's what happened to us in our hostel in Wellington: A nice chat with a german-speaking girl at breakfast revealed that she's is actually from Innsbruck, just two hours from where we live, and that she's a journalist and has also had her, hm, let'S say, experiences with the PR-agency we used to work for. Of course we had to celebrate that meeting and as usual when you say someting along the lines of "Hm, let's just go out a little", you end up getting terribly pissed with all sorts of weird stuff happening ... which we won't explain any further here, in Wellington it's just as in Vegas: What happens in Wellington, stays in Wellington ;-)
The headaching sequel to this night came the next morning when we had to get up after just three refreshing hours of sleep to catch the ferry to the South Island. So we stood waiting in line in the wee hours of the morning to catch our ferry when noticed that the lamp post next to our car was strangely moving back and forth. You might think that this was a consequence of the gin tonics that were still crusing around in our blood. However, after starring at that post for some minutes (not that easy to focus on with all those gin tonics, trust me...) it turned out that it was actually the strong Wellington winds that were tearing that post back and forth. And as could be expected this didn't mean anything good for the ferry trip. Just a couple of minutes later we were told that all ferries would be cancelled for the day.
Unfortunately, getting back to the hostel to finally catch some sleep we had to learn that it wasn't possible to check in again until 1 p.m., not even into the same beds that we had just left two hours ago. We learnt this at 9 a.m... So we did what everybody sharing our fate seemed to do and just joined the crowd on the couches, seats and mostly the floor of the lounge room.
How bad the weather must have been that day came apparent the next day when the ferry finally left with us aboard: It really tells you something When a huge ferry with loads of trucks and cars and several hundreds of passengers rocks back and forth so that you can't even walk straight any more (nope, no alcohol involved this time) and when the waves crashing against the ferry splash as high as the seventh floor... But hey, as the Lonely Planet says: "It ain't called Windy Wellington for nothing..."
But we made if eventually to the South Island and already when entering the harbour fjord of Picton we got the first glimpse of those amazing landscapes that we had come to NZ for in the first place.