A Week In...

So we've been here a week now. We're over the jet lag, we've got a good idea of the basics of getting around in the down town core (AKA The CBD - Central Business District). We've also figured out the public transit system (more or less) and started to understand what's where.

So what have we discovered?

• Public Transit here is good except when it's not. the buses run on time, they go everywhere we've wanted to go and they've been well maintained and clean. They aren't unreasonably priced, though their pricing structure is a little bizarre. When aren't they good? Weekends and holidays. We've had to disqualify a number of places and neighborhoods because buses didn't run on the weekends.
• Wellington has the most incredible coffee culture. Most people would believe that the number of coffee shops and cafes in Wellington is completely excessive, yet they are for the most part busy throughout the day and there's quite a difference in roasting, bean selection, taste, variety. About the only places I saw that weren't very busy were some of the Starbucks. It's really a case of the local shops having a much better understanding of the market then the chains. In fact, one barrista claimed that 60% of the New Zealand Starbucks were closing down
• Wellington is one of the hilliest places I've ever been. More hilly the Montreal, on par with the parts of San Francisco I've seen. We've been walking everywhere for a week now and we both have distinct pains throughout new muscles we're discovering.
• Meat tastes... meatier in New Zealand. I'm not sure if it's because most of it is pasture grown / local / grain fed, but the chicken tastes stronger, the beef beefier and the lamb more like barn (which isn't a bad thing) We've been making an effort to only buy New Zealand food products - the taste change in the meats is much more notable then in the vegetables.
• Every food product we could find in Canada we've now found equivalents for here. Sometimes it means shopping at more specialized shops (like for our indian spices, some asian products etc) but places like Pak'n'Save do most of what we need. New World is a little more expensive we'd expected, but again, the small specialized places tend to have what we need at the price we need it.
• In general, things aren't that much more expensive than in Canada. We'd originally expected anywhere between a 20% and 40% increase in price, but that hasn't really been the case. What is critical here is to watch the sales and make sure you shop intelligently. The difference between sale price and regular price here is MUCH more notable. It's not foreign to see sales that knock 40-60% off even common items.

I'm sure there's a ton of other things we've picked up on, but thats the first batch that came to mind. I could (and probably will) go on about the restaurants, the people and the city as a whole.