7/7(/07) AAA, Day 24: Later, Fiji, I'm feeling in the mood for some nut-shrinking weather

Better, somewhat. No intestinal distress and the fever broke overnight so it's pretty much golden. Hopped a flight (actually on time, yay!) to Wellington, New Zealand. Had one beer in the airport (money exchange places don't take coins) and a glass of champagne on the plane with the Kiwi woman next to me who was really sweet. But as the plane was getting ready to land, the flight attendant asked me to come back to the galley with him. I got back there and he asked if he could get a picture with me. He does this with his favorite passenger on each flight and puts them all up in the Air New Zealand staff rooms in various airports (look out, Singapore, here I come!). Apparently, my ability to actually enjoy a flight and make eye contact and smile (as well as make nice with middle-aged Kiwi women) qualified me as 'best passenger' on that flight.

So I landed laughing and went through customs the same way, but stopped laughing once I walked outside. It was a whopping 6 degrees (43F); I was freezing my ass off yesterday when my hostel room was 20 degrees (68F). I was not amused on the taxi ride into the city, but I did finagle a sweet free single room at the YHA Wellington City by joining their silly club (Finally, Zoidberg is being a crafty consumer!!). Got some take-out 'fush and chups' for dinner and hung around the awesome media room in the hostel that has a big screen TV and a free video library of about 200 movies. Watched Patch Adams and Dumb & Dumber before retiring for the evening.

Drink Count: 2

I did a whole lot of walking, writing and photographing along the waterfront this week, be warned:P.S. I became obsessed with this little part of town on the hill overlooking the harbor (click to make it bigger). I wrote pages and pages about it, made up a little history for it, even gave it a mayor and a city council. The big red church became my reference point in Wellington and a startling number of my pictures from this city have it appearing between buildings or off in the corner, in the distance.