Much beer was drunk

This is going to be a very beer-themed post. Wellington has a great beer scene, with lots of breweries based here in town. We’ve been doing the Wellington beer passport recently; you get a stamp for every bar you visit and earn a free t-shirt when you get 8 stamps.

It’s the “Wellington on a plate” food festival at the moment, for which restaurants across town create special one-off dishes. We went to the Sprig and Fern pub to try their beer and pie tasting board – you got five different miniature pies, with a beer to match each one.

We also checked out a couple of burgers that had been made for the festival. This was a bacon cheeseburger with fanta barbeque sauce and sprinkles on the bun.

For my birthday, Ash got me a session at the Occasional Brewer. This is a brewery where you make your own beer – you end up with 80 pints to take home. We need to do a couple of tasting sessions to decide what type of beer I want to make.

Finally, the main library in wellington is just opposite my office. When I went to check out my books, I discovered that you can set the checkout machines to speak like a pirate, which I found childishly satisfying.

My first rugby match

On the 20th of July I went to see my first ever rugby match – a lot of New Zealanders were entertainingly shocked when I explained I hadn’t been to one before. We saw the Wellington Hurricanes play the Waikato Chiefs (the team that Ash supports). The chiefs lost by one point so Ash wasn’t very happy.

At half time some guys in giant inflatable balls ran at each other.

On a random note, there was a really nice sunrise while I was waiting for the bus to work one day. 

The next Friday it was Ash’s friend Shelley’s birthday, and we went out for a Malaysian meal. Then it was my birthday the next day, so we went touristy and rode the cable car.

They had this light show deal in the tunnel.

We wondered around the botanical gardens at the top of the cable car track. Then we checked out the Korean Culture festival at the Wellington concert hall. The highlight was this performance, which was a sort of mashup between traditional music and and break dancers.

The New Zealand film festival is on at the moment – we checked out a Danish film called “the guilty”, about a police dispatcher who receives a call from an abducted woman. It was set entirely in the call centre, so the story unfolded just through the telephone calls; it was a really interesting concept. We’ve also booked in to see documentaries about medieval combat reenactors in New Zealand and guide dogs in training.

The next day, we went to a gin tasting session in town. We got two gin and tonics and a cheese and meat platter for $15 each (about £7 – eating out is definitely cheaper here, but making food at home is maybe a bit more expensive).

I flew up to Auckland for work on Monday, and got this shot of the sunrise from the plane.

I went for dinner in the marina with some colleagues that night and got the standard tourist shot of the skytower.