Wellington, NZ

I took an overnight bus from Auckland to Wellington. It was raining like crazy when we got to the bottom half of the North Island, and my gear got soaked!

For the first week, I house-and-cat sat for some friends in a suburb close to the center of the city, then moved into a hostel in the CBD, where I stayed for the remainder of my time there--about two months. The hostel is a former very posh hotel, the St. George, where the Beatles stayed when they toured NZ in the Sixties, and the foyer has large photo murals of them from that time.

The hostel itself, though, is very homey, but also very friendly. A lot of young people on working visas from all over the world stay there, and they regularly have cultural celebrations in the large shared kitchen/dining area/lounge to celebrate the residents' different national holidays, such as Diwali.

My room overlooked a cathedral that was currently closed because of recent earthquake damage, and a large office block. The coin phone box in the hostel is a Tardis!Read more