It started a bit like this…

“Dear Michele, would you like to go to Wellington to eat and drink?”

…. errrr…… YES!! OF COURSE!!!

It did involve waking up at 3am, getting to the airport to find the flight was delayed 1 hour 15 minutes, and I could have gotten an extra hour sleep.

But being at the international terminal meant a trip to Café Vue! Penny and I stumbled in, still mostly asleep to find one guy running the floor and counter area by himself at the not so bright hour of 5am. Due to the one man team, the service was extremely slow, it was lucky our flight was delayed. Strong coffee for Penny, and a mocha for me. I’m not a coffee drinker, but it was early, and I was meant to be on the ball in a few hours’ time!

Penny got the breakfast burger and I got the smoked trout with 67º eggs with hollandaise and watercress.

I think I was expecting to see more on the plate for both meals given the price, but I guess that’s pretty standard when it comes to ‘Vue’.

There were macarons to tempt me on the way out, but I resisted…. a food filled weekend awaited.

On the way over with Air New Zealand we were served breakfast. I opted for muesli, although I was not tempted to eat it. I stuck with the fruit only! The best thing about Air New Zealand planes… there is a USB port to charge your gadgets!! So my phone got a nice charging on the way over, only for me to realise as soon as we landed, I forgot to put my phone on global roaming. DOH!

We stayed at The Copthorne Oriental Bay, with gorgeous harbour views, and only a short walk into the CBD, where there is free wifi available….. this came in handy since I had no service on my phone. It did prove a bit tricky trying to get the free wifi at some points, but if you were right in the middle of the CBD you could get a pretty good signal; all you had to do was click on an ad and you got 30 mins free wifi.

You could tell how deprived and withdrawn we all felt when we went for a drink at The Matterhorn after dinner on Saturday night. They had free wifi at the bar, so Penny, Tom, Claire and I proceeded to get a drink and sit there on our phones, barely talking to each other 😛

So I’ll be blogging the trip in a few posts, and if you like what you see, then you can have your own New Zealand foodie experience by coming along to the WLG pop up restaurant coming to Melbourne in November.

This year’s menu will include tapas-style shared plates created especially for WLG by some of the Wellington regions most sought-after chefs for only $35, including Rex Morgan, head chef at Boulcott Street Bistro and one of the select few chefs to have won all of New Zealand’s culinary awards, Shaun Clouston, head chef at Cuisine Magazine’s Restaurant of the Year 2009 – Logan Brown, Tom Hutchinson, head chef and owner of Capitol, one of the Wellington’s most successful restaurants and Terry Lowe, head chef at Black Barn Restaurant and Vineyard Hawke’s Bay voted by Cuisine Magazine as New Zealand’s best winery restaurant in 2011.

Tickets will go on sale later this month and can be purchased via au.timeout.com/Melbourne, although there will be limited walk ins accepted.

You can see how it went last year in Sydney on Billy, Helen, Peter and John’s blogs.

Iron Chef Shellie visited Wellington as a guest of Positively Wellington Tourism.