[awithtutt]

My OH and I have just received our Visas so we're on our way to Wellington this sept! We're wondering what areas of Wellington we should look at. I will be working close to CBD and OH will be in Newtown. We'd love to cut down the commuting time, perhaps not use a car at all! (A novel idea coming from Ohio). We also have a 1.5yr old so something safe and family friendly would be nice. OH would like to bike to work if he can.

Any thoughts or advice are appreciated.
THANKS!

[Mrs Pony]

First have you been to NZ and seen the houses? Thorndon has the nicest houses and quite...

OH lived in Wellington for a year... We're not getting a car either...Strange thought indeed!

He says the busses are very good as well. (Here it would take 2 hours on the bus or 30 minutes to drive myself to work)

He liked Thorndon a lot. We'll be looking there and in CBD, Mt Victoria, Te Aro, Kelburn, Mt Cook and Hataitai.

OH refuses to look in New Town... so unless it's changed since March 2007... you might want to try Te Aro, Hataitai (bus), Mt Vic & Cook

here's a few maps...
http://www.wellington.govt.nz/maps/pdfs/suburbs/suburbs.pdf
http://www.wellington.govt.nz/maps/index.html

[tigerlily]

Newtown is well connected by bus, so you could live beyond there- maybe Island Bay for a beachy feel? Or even Miramar, which I like because its more flat and trike-happy than a lot of hilly suburbs. I'm not a huge fan of Thorndon mostly because it's right on the fault line, but also because parts of it are in the shadow of Tinakori Hill, and sun is your friend! Thorndon would be a fab place to live if I had no kids and wanted to be close to work and closer to the nightlife options (which are all on Courtney Place). Te Aro, Mt. Cook or Mt.Vic would have similar options, old houses with flats.

We are renting in Wadestown, which is above Thorndon, sunny, hilly and more expensive than I could ever afford to buy in. We lived here without a car for 3 months. I lost a lot of weight walking on that hill! But in the end, we wanted to be able to get to the beach anytime we wanted and not have it take an hour on the bus. Yes, it's an hour from here to Houghton Bay, the other end of our bus line.

You can consider further out burbs like Ngaio or Khandallah or even Tawa or Johnsonville- they are all on the train line, which connects to the bus stop which leaves for Newtown every ten seconds it seems to me (mostly because I'm not going to Newtown).

I think I've written before about Newtown, we stayed there for a couple of weeks when we first arrived. It's the most ethnically diverse part of the city from what I can tell. Walking around at 2 am might not be advisable there or in other parts of the city as well.