Saturday came around and my legs were in no mood to be up and walking. After so much quadrupedal work up and down flights of stairs on Friday night, they wanted a rest. I forced them outside to the bus terminal and they got to rest while I caught the bus out to Eastbourne. I was curious about the eastern side of Wellington Harbour. From the arbitrary point where I decided to disembark, I set out along the shoreline. It was yet another beautiful day, bereft of the wind and rain I had been promised. Suffice to say, I was disappointed at Wellington's efforts!
There's a gravel road that follows the coast another 11km beyond the end of the public streets and looks like it'd be a great bike ride, but on foot I decided against doing the whole walk out and back (though I was tempted). Around a 6km walk out until I found a suitable rock to scramble onto for a view, and then back to track down a bus into the city.
As much as checking out the University, I was in Wellington to check out the other activities on offer. One thing that's a regular part of my life in Hobart is dancing, and I fully intended to test out the local groups. One of the numerous Scottish Country Dance groups in the Wellington area is the Lower Hutt group, who were quite conveniently running their Annual Dance on Saturday night. Kilted up and laden with weights, it took a while wandering the suburb of Lower Hutt to find the event. It was definitely worthwhile.
The first dance had 72 dancers on the floor in nine sets. A few more arrived late and some left early, but there were still nine sets for the last dance, four hours later. We rarely have more than six sets on the floor at our large dances. When I eventually found my way back to Wellington (some 4 hours after the dance finished; I may have taken detours), it was another hour before I sought out my hostel. Too many unexplored streets to wander while having rambling phone conversations back to Australia.
Sunday was a relaxed day. Nothing to mar its calm but a few more hours wandering the streets of the city, a quick run up Mt Victoria and over the back to scope out the best way out to the airport and running up and down the hostel stairs because I could.
Technically into the following week, but so early that it was still the weekend in parts of Australia, I checked out and set off for the airport. A sensible person would have caught a shuttle bus, rather than walking through the night with a bag full of wine bottles and a weighted vest. Having established that I'm not a sensible person early on, I had no interest in acting like it now.
It was tempting to head over the top of Mt Victoria, getting a last view of the city by night, but I had already gone that way a few times and I wanted to try something different. Besides, I was in New Zealand. "If we cannot go over the mountain, I say let us go under it!" Wellington is riddled with tunnels, for trains, buses, cars and people. One of them is the Mt Victoria Tunnel. Another is a pedestrian tunnel conveniently going under the airport. Between the two of them, an hour's mixed jogging and walking had me at the airport.
After that, it was the new week throughout Australia so we'll say the weekend had ended.
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