A day in Wellington

April 4, 2010


We had a fantastic day today in Wellington. We all woke fairly early as the clocks had gone back the night before. It was windy and a bit cloudy but in the low 20’s. We headed right out the back door and started climbing the hills behind our house right up to the ridges overlooking the city. Wellington has a bit of a feel of Vancouver, a bit of San Francisco but is different from both. It is a government city as the capital of New Zealand with a population of just over 400,000. This means that while the city is spread out around the harbour and up into the hills, the core is compact with a mix of newer high rises mixed with older buildings, warehouses and residential homes. The parliament buildings are literally two blocks from where we are staying and the Prime Ministers home is just a couple of streets away. The older architecture (which is all wooden to be earthquake proof) is ‘Empire’ or ‘Victorian’ with bay windows, stained glass, sparse use of ginger bread and often with beautiful ornamental iron work. We walked the hills overlooking the city and had some wonderful photo ops. We ended up at the botanical gardens and toured the heritage rose beds and the begonia greenhouses. We then headed over to Te Papa, the museum of New Zealand which is dedicated to the natural history, Maori heritage and geologic and historic past of New Zealand. A brilliant museum and free! We particularly enjoyed the visiting exhibit on the ancient city of Pompeii, the permanent collection of Pounamu (Maori carved Jade) and the Maori artefacts like the hand carved meeting house and huge war canoe. As with all museums like this there simply wasn’t time to do it all in an afternoon. Since this was Easter Sunday the city was shut down and there was virtually no one out in the streets. We wandered back along the harbour looking at ships, sea life and lovely restaurants. We are off tomorrow to Napier, a coastal city that was badly destroyed by an earthquake in the early 1930’s and rebuilt in Art Deco architecture. Our thanks to Pete and Andrea for being such wonderful hosts during our too brief stay in Wellington.