Wellington, New Zealand

Saturday was a beautiful sunny day to spend walking around Wellington. We took the shuttle bus to the downtown area and got a map of the city. We decided it was a short distance to many of the tourist sites and we would walk it all.

Wellington is the capital city of New Zealand and therefore has some of the best museums etc. It has a population of only 450,000 people which is small considering some of our cities. The city was easy to navigate. First we walked along the wharf to the Te Pap Museum. It is one of the largest national museums in the world and has a significant Maori display. It was also holding the Monet Exhibition. We toured the entire 6 floors and found the museum to be excellent. From there we walked to Cuba Street where the Carnival was taking place. It really reminded us of The Fringe with the buskers and food carts and thousands of people milling around. There were 40,000 people and at one point, Doug and I thought we would never be able to get through. We then walked to the city centre and found the famous cable car. The car reached the top of the hill overlooking Wellington where we had an excellent view of the city. We then proceeded down the hill to the Wellington Botanic Gardens. This garden covers 62 acres with long winding paths through protected native forest and plant collections. We walked and walked through the forest down to the Lady Norwood Rose Garden where there were hundreds of roses in bloom and paths leading through the roses. We hurried to the The Begonia House, before it closed ,to take photos of the huge displays of different begonias. It was beautiful. Doug and I looked at each other and said, Hey we have been here before and sure enough we were here with the ship in 2003. Inside the Begonia House was a lily pond, and outside was a fountain with mallard ducks swimming around and around. After this we wound down to the city centre and headed for Old St Paul's church that Doug heard about in the lecture about Welllington. The interior was built to resemble Noah's ark. When we found the church, I had another aha moment and said we were here too. We went inside and looked around. Yes, we were here too. We had seen so much and had done 5 hours of walking so as we limped back to the ship, we thought to ourselves, we did this entire city on foot and saw so much in one day. It was a great day to be walking in the sunshine with cool winds. Wellington is known as the windy city.

Today, Sunday, we are heading for Dunedin and the fjords. It is foggy outside and I can hear the ship's fog horn blowing every so often warning other ships we are in the vicinity. Today is a full day of lectures and Doug is gone for Sunday brunch in the Crystal Cove. This is my time to get some emails sent.