Day 325: Roadtrip to Wellington
Pretty rough to say goodbye to the Taupo palace we were living in for the last five nights. Felt like such imposters.
The house manager — a guy named Jamie — took a liking to us during our stay and had lots of recommendations for our ride to Wellington (remember, we canceled the flight and decided to drive).
Also, he’s Welsh, and I’d learned yesterday that he has a son named Llewellyn, which is my mom’s name. He thought this was incredible. I had embarrassingly little (read: nothing) to share about my Welsh heritage, but promised him that if I ever decided to visit Wales with my mom, I’d email him with questions!
In return, he came back this morning with a gift: A book from his shelf called “A History of Wales,” and a typed note inside telling me to look him up if I decide to go with my “mum” — he’s seriously passionate about Welsh history and would be happy to fill me in. So kind.
By 11 am we were on the road, with 5 hours of road trip ahead.
We passed the journey by making a few stops:
The Army Museum of New Zealand – We didn’t do the full thing but did stop to check out the cool tanks and the free exhibit about animal war heroes.
Next we stopped for lunch at the Brown Sugar Cafe in Taihape, which came highly recommended by our buddy Jamie. It had good food and a really cute shop.
Eating a “Fluffy” aka a cup of frothed milk with chocolate dust
After another two hours or so we made a bathroom break stop in Bulls, a town where everything has a bull pun (like “the consta-bull”). It felt like an abandoned southern mountain town — which is funny because we’re listening to Dolly Parton’s America right now. I stopped in a junk shop and bought an old-timey apron.
Our last stop before reaching Wellington was a suburb north of town where Teddy had arranged to have coffee with the founder of CrickHQ — basically the “GameChanger of cricket.” They’ve been in touch over the years and decided to meet up.
While they did, I took the kids to a playground (such a random spot).
Willa got a huge scrape on her back after falling off the monkey bars, a bloody gum from a collision with her brother’s head and James got a bloody chin gash from a seesaw on the upswing. At one point I wondered — I’m sitting here with no car and 4% phone battery in the middle of god knows where…what would I do if one of my kids really needed to go to an emergency room? Fortunately Teddy returned before it came to that.
One funny thing while we were at the park. James ran up to me and totally randomly asked: “Mama, do some people think real life is just a dream? But it’s actually really not?” He meant: Are there people who think all this reality is actually only just some dream they’re having? I was still unpacking that one as he ran back off to play.
Reminded me of my friend Amanda (hi Amanda!!) who, her mom told me once (hi Perry!!), asked at age 4 or 5: “When is the person who’s dreaming me going to wake up?” Dang. Kids are on another level.
We drove into town and checked into the QT Wellington hotel around 7 pm tonight.
The hotel is cool but evvvvverything is broken and/or poorly managed here. To the point of comedy. A few examples:
- Opened a cabinet in the kitchen and the door almost broke off.
- Turned on the shower and the knob came off in my hand.
- Turned on the kitchen sink and faulty faucet sprayed water everywhere.
- Called for in-room dining and no one answered after 30+ rings.
- Called front desk and no one answered there either.
- Hung up and waited 3 minutes and called front desk again.
- Reception finally answered, apologized for in-room dining folks not answering, and offered to take our order herself.
- Said it would take an hour to arrive.
- Called back to clarify which type of lasagna we wanted — vegetable or meat.
- Called back to say that actually the items we’d ordered were not available at all! (We ended up ordering Mexican from a nearby restaurant).
- Came to our room to inspect faulty AC and had no idea how to resolve it.
This last one was particularly amusing. It was a 20-something woman new to her job who came to look at the AC unit. She was kind and apologetic but utterly useless. As our door was closing on her, we heard one last apology from the hall — she was trying to tell us that she’d “literally just started working here,” but what slipped out instead was priceless: “I LITERALLY just WORK here!”
We couldn’t stop laughing. This place is shit.
We’re about halfway through reading The Hobbit to the kids now — but I made a big mistake this morning. I showed them an image of the character Gollum from the movies. Instead of doing what I thought they’d do, which was casually say, like, “Ew, he’s kind of gross but funny.” They were utterly petrified and silent, with James eventually squeaking out, “That’s SUPER SCARY.” Oops. Willa took a while to go to bed because of it. “I keep thinking that Gollum you showed us is going to jump up against the side of my bed and scare me!” D’oh!
Our room is tiny and the AC broken. It’s not hot out, but the room was stuffy — and when we opened the window, the street noise of buses and cars was too loud. Plus we’re all sleeping together in two double beds. It was….not a great night of sleep.
MISC:
I keep meaning to make a note of this and forgetting. Our kids fully call us “Mama” and “Dada.” Mama is fine — charming in a Dolly kind of way — but Dada?? Uggggh. Even my mom, way back on her visit to see us in the Middle East, asked: “What’s all this ‘DADA’ stuff?”
Every time they call Teddy Dada, I want to tell them to knock it off! Call him Daddy! Dad! Anything else but freakin Dada! But I bite my tongue, because I’m pretty sure in about 5 years (or less), I’ll be mourning the sound of their little voices calling out for Dada. So I’m letting it slide. But, for the record: come ON!! Seriously?? Dada??
James recently has found it fun to assign each of us a letter that represents the thing that defines us. Yesterday it was (according to him):
James: “F” for funny
Willa: “H” for Harry Potter
Teddy: “E” for eggs (he’s made a lot of scrambled eggs lately)
Me: “P” for …perfect. Whaaaa? Moi??? I was utterly blushing and swooning, Miss Piggy style. But. Then he clarified. “Because you always want EVERYTHING to be PERFECT.” I don’t know what was more disappointing, the fact that he didn’t mean that I was a perfect human being, or …that he doesn’t know me at all!! I’m pretty sure that as he was announcing all this, I had my underpants on backwards, had lost the car keys and was in the process of burning his toast. Not capable of having everything be perfect. But we can revisit this section when he gets to therapy.
Then, today he revised the list to be:
James: “F” for funny (quite confident on this front)
Willa: “N” for nibbler (she notoriously gnaws on food – a habit we’re desperate to break)
Teddy: “D” for driver (Teddy has 100% bore the brunt of South Africa/Australia/NZ driving – I just do not trust myself to make split-second interstate decisions while driving on the left side of the highway with my kids in the car!!).
Me: “S” for…..scarecrow. Okay, that’s a far fall from “perfect.” He meant my straw hat. Fine. Whatever. Scarecrow. Great.
How many of you — who don’t work at the State Department, have never been to New Zealand and are 20+ years removed from high school geography — thought Auckland was the capital of New Zealand? Yeah, we thought so. Let’s just say it was eye-opening for us too.
Last note: Here’s more on New Zealand’s campaign to teach tourists how to act…
