Canberra V Wellington

I had high hopes for Wellington after hearing about the fabulous food and arty crowd. Although its small population was a bit of a worry, but for a town about the size of canberra it is about 400 times livlier.

Loads of bars and non-public servanty people, an awesome museum (yes, museum) and pretty cool local designers made up for the hideous hostel we'd booked ourselves into (Base Wellington is now known as the nosiest hostel in the world).

Wellington is also the gateway to the ferry to the south island - so after a bleary early morning after no sleep we boarded the ferry over to Picton and wine country.

We'd decided to stay in Renwick rather than Blenheim due to its proximity to the wineries, but it was a very, very small town with not a whole lot going on, but the hostel was lovely. The wines were also lovely, although dominated by Pinot Gris and not the expected Sav Blanc.

From here I'd wanted to head off to Hanmer Springs for some pampering. It was a surprisingly busy town with about 400 bikies and a mountain bike race going on, so we were lucky to get accommodation.