Wellington to Cairns with a slumber party in Auckland

I had grabbed an early bus to Wellington so I would have one last day there. I stored my huge luggage bags in a hotel near the bus stop and spent the day enjoying my last day in New Zealand. I hadn't really bought many souvenirs yet or Christmas presents for anyone and I wasn't really in much of a mood to but I found a few things anyway. I took an hour and toured the Parliament beehive house and learned about the government of the country just as I was about to leave it. There are still a lot of weird rules and stuff to do with the queen but it was interesting. I was extremely tired from a few long days and my night wasn't looking too restful but after my tour I decided to walk up to the Wellington Botanical Gardens anyway. It was a short steep walk and the gardens were lovely. The view of Wellington was fantastic, definitely worth the walk. Once at the top there was a cable car going up and down the steep Wellington slopes and on account of my fatigue and that fact that it looked like fun, I bought a ticket to take the cable car back down to the city center of Wellington

Beehive Parliament House

Rose Gardens

Peace Pool

Wellington

Cable Track

Cable Car

I had another hour or so I could walk around but decided to admit my impending exhaustion and move my somber self to the airport. I lugged my 4 bags up Cuba street a block to catch the airport bus. It was a surprisingly small airport for the capital and checking in was a breeze. You even went through security right at the gate instead of one main station. I had about 2 hours until my flight and didn't dare go to sleep for fear I wouldn't wake up. I ate my dinner and sent a few emails. I must have dozed off in the plane because the flight was a very short hour. I landed in Auckland about 9:30pm cutting it close to make a short 10 hour layover. My flight for Cairns was set to leave at 7:00 am. Fortunately while comparing travel plans with some friends earlier we discovered we would both had about the same layover in Auckland so it was a little slumber party in the airport. Julianne and Niamh were headed for a holiday to Tonga. We took over a few rows of chairs and surrounded all of our stuff and waited for our 5 am check ins. We all slept off and on in the uncomfortable benches with people coming and going all night. We had made our beds on the second floor of the airport while the check in counters were on the 1st so we thought we had plenty of time when we headed down to check in at 5:15. Boy were we wrong. The lines were huge! Since I was flying to Australia I got through it pretty quick but Julianne and Niamh were going to have to wait. Although my thoughts of being quick were dashed when I had to wait for customer service just to check my extra bag. After all of this it was about 30 minutes until my flight so I rushed up to security, Julianne and Niamh were only about 5 minutes behind. Security was crazy and they even were weighing carry on bags, only allowing 7kgs so I had to throw on my extra jacket and crammed my scriptures in my hoodie pocket and still didn't make the weight limit but they let me through anyway. So after waiting about 12 min for security I got stopped and searched because of my bottle of sunscreen. So finally I made it through with about 10 minutes until my flight was supposed to leave so I sprinted to my gate that seemed forever away as I heard the call, the final call for my flight. I made it just in time and barely sat down as they were closing the door. At this point I had been running and wearing 2 of my heaviest jackets the whole time so I was cooking! I think my seat buddy thought I was crazy but that is ok, because I am. I got a few more hours of sleep on the plane and landed in Cairns about 10 am.