Birthday celebrations

Nick's 29 today! It's sad to say that we've actually gotten use to sleeping in our little van and although the bed here is super comfy we both didn't sleep too well. I think it takes a while to get use to a bed so suddenly changing didn't agree with us too much. After I made us a birthday worthy breakfast of beans and poached eggs on toast Nick had the task of opening all his presents. He was blown away to discover that I'd written out cards for him to open on my family's behalf. He was so touched by this gesture and much like last year amazed I'd managed to get so many presents behind his back. It a amazing what you can do with the 1 minute someone spends in the toilet. Gift shops do really have their limitations on useful nice gifts. We took our time to get ready before heading into the capital city for the day. Nick had chosen to visit the Te Papa museum in Wellington which has been ranked one of the top 500 things to do in the world. We parked in a carpark that gave us all day parking for $14 and convienniently wasn't too far from the museum, something we really appreciated seeing as it was raining. We put our bags in the cloak room and after talking to an assistant headed into an exhibition they were currently showing on the battle of Gallipoli. Many kiwis fought in the 8 month long battle so it was very relevant to the country. The museum had collaborated with Weta Workshop, the company that made the LOTR and The Hobbit film's props, costumes and make-up. The company had produced huge 2.5 times life sized wax work models of real people involved in the war. The sculptures were incredible and the attention to detail like nothing I'd seen before. You could see every pore, hair, even sweat droplet on each model and it must of taken the company so incredibly long to produce. You then walked through into an area that talked about the story of the person who the model was based on. We spent so long in this one exhibition without once feeling like it was getting boring or too much information. It is hands down the best laid out and enjoyable museum exhibition I've been too where you want nothing more than to keep reading. We did reach a point where our bellies began to rumble so we headed to the cafe for a lovely bit of lunch. After some food we explored another area of the museum about the native and introduced species of New Zealand. This was a permanent exhibit and although it was interesting it was nowhere near as engaging as the Gallipoli one. We eventually felt we'd filled our brains with enough information for one day and walked into what appeared to be the main shopping area for an early birthday dinner at Nandos. Of course it had to be Nandos for a special occasion. We very much enjoyed having meat for the first time in a while but definitely ate way too much food as usual. We had planned to visit somewhere with Wi-Fi for Nick to use but the rain had picked up a bit so we just decided to head back before rush hour kicked in and it got too cold. We watched another brilliant film on Netflix and that ended Nick's second birthday abroad. I do wonder if I'll be having to sneak around to buy presents in a foreign country for the third time in a row. There's such a huge part of us that wants to keep travelling and working around the world but there's an equally big part that longs to be home in a routine, building a life with people we love not an 11 hour time difference away. For now we will keep doing it as we are enjoying it until the pull of going home becomes too much. We'll just have to wait and see if Nick ends up having his 30th birthday abroad.Read more