A visit from Rannie and Pete

My blogging has been quiet for the last week or two as I've been busy with visitors. Important visitors from Perth - my lovely Anne friend and her partner Pete. The first weekend we spent together in Auckland - mainly because that's where they flew in and I hadn't been there in a while so was keen to check out the big smoke. We had a great time. We went out for schwanky dinners down at the harbour and checked out some cool bars including a russian vodka bar and a bar made entirely of ice. Yes, it was all made of ice - even the glasses that we drank out of were ice. We got kitted up specially in huge coats and gloves and were only allowed to stay in the bar for 30 minutes or we'd get too cold. Very exciting. Unfortunately you're not allowed to take pics inside the bar, but here's Pete in his warm coat:
The rest of the time in Auckland was marred by horrible rain so we spent a lot of time cosied up in cafes and also went to the Underwater World thing where we saw penguins and sharks ans eels and cool stuff.

At the aquarium looking for sharks!

Anne and Pete spent the week in Rotorua doing all sorts of cool things - thermal springs and mud baths and white water rafting and geothermally things. They seemed to have a pretty good time and it was very very lovely to have them to stay.
On the second weekend they were here, we all drove down to Wellington (our nation's capital) for some more tasty restaurants and classy bars. I really love Wellington - it is very pretty and there are so many great bars and cafes and they have yum cha....
The only downside I guess is that the weather is sheet - both times I've been there it has been winter and wind is just so icey! While we were in Welly, we were joined by my flatmate Karen who was on her way back up from a trip around the south island. And we also caught up with my ex-flatmate Sebastian (who has moved to Welly) and some of his mates. So we had a really nice time. I loved going to Te Papa (the national museum) and actually getting to spend time going through the displays, eating tasty food (like this place called Chow we had lunch at - highly recommended), having bagels, seeing nice bars and just generally wandering the streets and the harbour.

The view from our hotel room
Matt and me at the harbour
Sun! Yay sun!
Pretty welly

Then, sadly on Sunday, Anne and Pete jumped on a ferry to start their cold south island adventure. I spoke to them yesterday and they are having an amazing time-skiing and flying in helicopters over glaciers! And freezing their bums off - it got as low as -18 in some places on the south island the other night! The rest of us turned north back to Rotorua our sad hearts were cheered as we passed along the desert road and got amazing views of snow covered Ruapehu and Ngauruhoe mountains.