Hey guys,
I kinda went quiet during the past 6 days, and that's because I went to New Zealand with my family. We flew to Auckland, which kinda reminded me of Central meets Kings Cross. The number of adult shops we walked past was astounding. We didn't do much in Auckland because once my dad picked up a car hire, we drove to Rotorua. The apartment hotel in Auckland was really nice, but the motel in Rotorua was really uncomfortable. Since my grandma was with us, she finds it a bit difficult to walk after her knee surgery. But the motel didn't really have a lift to help her up the stairs so that was problem number one. Another problem with the motel was that the beds and pillows were hard. Mixed with the fact that my grandma snores (and my sister is an occasional snorer), I couldn't sleep. I was running on around 2-4 hours of sleep per day. I don't think I slept at all on our last night in Rotorua.
Anyway, we did go to Hobbiton and walked around the set of The Hobbit/Lord of the Rings. I've only read the books so it was a bit difficult to catch on what was going on. But the Hobbit Holes were really cute and the landscape was very picturesque. I ended up buying a Funko Pop figurine of Gandalf (making it 4 Funko Pop figurines in my room- I love collecting figurines). We also went to the Waitomo Glowworm Cave, which was pretty cool to walk around and see rock formations. And of course, the glowworms were really pretty, almost like looking at stars (blue ones).
After staying in Rotorua, we drove to Taupo. The villa we stayed in was actually really nice. Too bad I couldn't sleep. I remember walking around at night and checking the time, which was around 4am. I had about 3 hours of sleep that night. And then I realised that I caught a cold. It was difficult to swallow and I was extremely tired, which was bad because we were driving from Taupo to Wellington (around a 6 hour drive). It also rained the previous night so it was very windy and I was walking around numerous gas stations in shorts so it didn't really help my cold. Thank god my grandma is a walking Chemist Warehouse because she had cough lollies, Panadol, Nurofen and Codral in her handbag. My sister also caught a cold before me so it didn't really help my cold.
Even though Wellington is the capital city of New Zealand, there wasn't much there. I was expecting it to be filled with shopping malls, kinda like Town Hall/Central/St James. But it was kinda quiet. There were a couple of rows of shops though. We boarded a cable car there and were expecting to walk back down since you pass the Space Place and the Botanical Gardens. I ended up at the Space Place (of course), which was actually kinda small. I was hoping it to be like Questacon (fun, interactive, big) but it was just a bunch of information boards thrown at you. It was interesting to read though. It almost felt like I was revising for the Cosmic Engine/Space topic. We also bought some mugs from the Gift Shop. I kinda wished we bought the Periodic Table shower curtains just for the lols but it was really expensive, around $55 NZ. We ended up buying a Periodic Table mug and a NASA mug (so I can pretend I visited NASA lmao).
There wasn't much to do in Wellington and it was already difficult to deal with 2 sick kids, a grandma being wheeled around in a wheelchair and two parents still exhausted from the road trip so we ended up buying dinner and bringing it back to the hotel. My sleep improved slightly at the hotel but I still was going around with at least 5 hours of sleep. But it was even worse on the night before out flight. Our flight was at 6.35am so we had to be up at around 4am. And I was dealing with 2 hours of sleep. I didn't bother sleeping on the plane because I don't usually sleep well on planes. I ended up dozing off in the taxi on our way home, but didn't really doze off that long because we already arrived at our house.
I am still a bit jet-lagged, even though for the first time in 6 days, I finally slept for over 10 hours. It was also great to see my cat again. My aunt was taking care of her but since my cat gets stressed really easily (she pooped in her cage on her way to my aunt's house), she didn't eat for most of her stay there. She only started to eat a bit on day 5, but only if my aunt physically fed her. I'm glad she's starting to eat normally now but she looks really skinny (her hip bone is quite noticeable). She's also dealing with a bit of a separation anxiety. When I left her in my parents' room by herself, she would start meowing a lot. She's also sticking with us, a lot, and very affectionate.
Even though I'm still on holiday, returning to Sydney is kinda like going back to reality. I actually have things to do. I need to start doing some self-study in preparation for uni (just thinking about it makes me anxious so preparation is the only way for me to calm my nerves) and I'm working on some more writing.
Anyway, I'm a bit exhausted so I guess here's where my post will end.
See you soon!
- Olivia