Dear Nina

Thank you very much for kindly putting us up in your lovely home in Wellington while we stay here and even more generously giving up your room for us. It has been so lovely staying in a home for the first time and being so comfortable and easy. Thank you for living so close to town at the top of Majoribanks Street so we can stroll in every day. Thank you for living at the top of a stupidly big hill so I can feel quite how unfit I am when I had to piggyback Donna to the top of it the other night. We have got cabs ever since.

So after lots of time spent in various butf*** nowhere locations we have spent the last week living up the city-life; first in Brisbane and now in Wellington. The most exciting thing to report is our renewed ability to stay up until very late, dancing; first in Brisbane where we made up for losing our Faithful Sidekick Chloe © by going out with Daryl and Amy for a very jolly night out in Brisbane, starting in an English-themed pub which had the dubious distinction of being the Australian home of every single English team's supporters but in reality had two of the friendliest waitresses I have ever met and then onto a rather good bar with a band straight out of the 90s; Colour Me Bad or All for One springs to mind. Possibly not what would immediately spring to mind when you were imagining a good night out but by the end of the night Donna was informing every single member of the band who would listen to her quite how good they are.

We then spent our very last day in Australia sunbathing in the lovely hostel rooftop bar and shopping. I did the rooftop swimming pool and Donna did the shopping. A lovely end to our Australia adventure only spoiled when I tried to swot a fly away and accidentally threw my Kindle into the swimming pool. The Kindle that survived being left on a plane to Chiang Mai and went off and had its own adventure before coming back to me has finally met its match. We gave it a fitting send off. Donna is more upset than me because it means that I will end up stealing hers all the time.

And so we arrived in Wellington and immediately got a shock because it is cold here, not actually cold cold but when you have spent the last 3 months in Asia and Australia, you develop a very low tolerance to wind and sub 30 degree temperatures.

First stop was to rush to the second hand shop to stock up as many hoodies as we could buy for under a tenner (three it turns out). Two days later we are adjusting to the cold and have even been seen not wearing trousers today. On the plus side, I think that Wellington is the perfect weather for butter. You can leave it out on the side and it stays that perfect consistencies, not too hard but not too soft. It makes toast so much better. Mmm, I might go and have some more toast.

Coming back to Welly after five years away, I can accurately report that the C'N'Cheese Burger (no salad, extra bacon) in Burgerfuel is still the best burger in the world ever (FACT) although I still don't know what the C stands for.

Also Wellington still provides one of the best pub crawls in the world; starting in the only Welsh pub in the Southern Hemisphere where you can happily observe small petty minded people from one of England's less agreeable colonies doing what they do best by indulging in bitterness. Moving on swiftly to Base Backpacker bar which despite being even less agreeable than the Welsh pub has the advantage of still selling the cheapest jagerbombs in town; onto Alice, a cocktail bar based around Alice in Wonderland which sells jolly nice cocktails in teapots, a quick stop in Ancestral, a new bar that does very good chargrilled food (according to Donna) and finishing up in Electric Avenue for some high quality dancing to a fine 80s soundtrack. Thanks Eddie and Nina for joining us and making a night out to rival previous Wellington pub crawls. It was so good to catch up with both of you after so long.

The other exciting news is that today we have picked up our hire car for the next two months. It is an old Nissan Sunny but very cute and sporty and we love it lots already. We have called it Sunny, obviously. It is nice to be travelling with three people again even if one of them is a car. We were extra excited to find 'Famous Five Go On An Adventure' Audiobook CD in the player when we got in. That will keep us going for the first leg of our journey and then after that Donna has bought the latest 'Now…' album just so we can feel like we are on Fraser Island with 18 year old Germans in charge of the music again. I can't wait.

All our love

Jim and Donna