Epic Road Trip: Sunday

Sunday I also spent in Wellington. I decided that I would take a nice leisurely stroll  to the Botanical gardens.

This picture was about 1/2 hour into what turned out to be a crazy uphill hike that rivaled Tablerock! All the roads were as steep or steeper than what this picture shows.  

So I got all the way back down and decided to go for a ride on the cable car, not realizing that cable car went straight up the hill and ended at....THE BOTANICAL GARDEN!!! Haha I definitely surpassed my goal of 10.000 steps a day....by over 2,000 steps. And my fitbit confused my hike uphill for climbing 45 flights of stairs haha. 

This was the view that I saw while riding the cable car. The harbor is beautiful. But it also give you an idea of how steep this hill is! My hotel is one of those big buildings down by the pier!

This was one of my favorite views from the Botanical garden.

They had a path that went from the top of the hill all the way back down to town. Much like the yellow brick road...only I had to follow the pink flowers! The path I walked is shown below. Don't let it fool you though, It also was not a leisurely flat walk....it was all down hill, which is WAY better than the one UP HILL. :0)

 

 

The rose garden was about halfway back down the path to town. It was so pretty! So many different colors of roses!

 
 

So, on my way back to town, I exited the Botanical Garden and then you can take a number of different paths down to town through this gorgeous park.

 

What I didn't realize until a few minutes later was that this beautiful park is also a cemetery!! Sometimes the graves were hidden so you almost couldn't tell that it was a burial plot. There would be these sections of graves, then you could walk quite a ways before coming across another group of graves. One thought that kept going through my head though, was at least you couldn't choose a more beautiful place to be buried. It really was just an extremely odd place to find a cemetery. There were quite a few headstones that I just couldn't figure out where they would have actually placed the casket as it was on the side of a very steep section of hill. It was a bit crazy! I normally wouldn't be caught dead walking through a cemetery (pun not intended haha), day or night because they just have a creepy feel to it and I am easily freaked out. 

 But it was so beautiful that there was just this very peaceful, calming feeling all the way through it. 

 

On one side of this wall you can clearly see the motorway...on the other side is the beautiful park/cemetery! 

After quite a few hours, I finally made it back down to town. It was a bit of an adventure but I would go back and walk through that park any day!!