Today marks the halfway point of our holiday, which was not well received when I shared that with the kids. Everyone looked depressed and Oliver looked sadly at Abi and said “why would she even tell us that?” 😂

We designated today a sleep-in day and decided to leave at around 10am to head into the city to explore. However, with eight OB Joneses sharing a bathroom and six needing to shower in the morning, we didn’t get out the door until 10.15am. (I’m allocating everyone a 10 minute time slot from tomorrow, which if they snooze, they lose!!!!). With showers predicted for the afternoon, we headed straight for the lookout at the top of Mt Victoria. Much fun ensued as we played with panorama pictures, and we then drove back down to Wellington’s waterfront.

Luke managed to find a two hour paid parking spot that fit the bus, so we left it there and walked up to the Cuban quarter. This was disappointing as it was not dissimilar to Pitt St Mall, and we somehow missed a craft brewery and chocolate factory! There were several lunch choices though, so Ross, Luke, Jarrod and Tim had kebabs while the rest of us had Subway.

We then met up again and walked down to the national museum, called Te Papa, which was highly recommended by our Airbnb hosts, our Lone Star waitress and TripAdvisor! It was very good, but our favourite exhibit there was a Gallipoli exhibit, with larger-than-life models made by the Weta Studios (which are based in Wellington and responsible for props and characters in LOTR and The Hobbit movies).

My intention during my research phase was to do the hop-on-hop-off bus around the city, as that worked well for us in the USA and gave us a lot of information about each city as we landed there. However, there was no family or group price, just a cost of $49 per adult and $30 per child, so we voted to give that an absolute miss and explore ourselves! I did use it’s route as a guide of what to see in the city though.

Another stop on the hop-on-hop-off bus journey was the Beehive building which houses Parliament, but surprisingly, no one but me was interested in seeing it! Sadly we could not find parking nearby, but Luke did drive around it so I could have a good look, which allowed us to also see the Reserve Bank 🏦 (🎉) and the historic St Paul’s Cathedral Church.

From there we headed home, just as the rain set in, so Ross and Luke could have a power nap before State of Origin tonight (which doesn’t start here until 10pm and we are planning to live stream on a child’s computer – the boys bought a HDMI cable yesterday to hopefully stream it through the large tv). The kids are now watching a movie on Netflix, while Abi does some Maths homework (finally!…rather than just talking about doing it), and Jarrod and Tim are playing with Ollie (the quality cousin time being my favourite part of family holidays!), while sharing a pre-dinner cheese platter with us. We are ready for Origin!