Wellington

We have seen Wellington.  The morning started with a tour of Parliament.  While not in session, it was a neat collection of buildings to check out, and the guide was very, very knowledgeable and informative through the hour tour.  New Zealand has been unicameral for the last sixty years, after abolishing its upper house in the 1950s.  Also interesting (to me), was the fact that there are 121 representatives from eight political parties which make up the assembly.  There are only supposed to be 120 – I don’t quite understand how you accidentally end up with an extra person… But hey, it’s New Zealand; does it really matter in the grand scheme of things?

From parliament we headed to find some sustenance (we were feeling a bit peckish), and headed toward the city centre (nothing is very far in Wellington, city of a hundred thousand or so), passing old St. Paul’s along the way.  After a quick bite at subway (NZ$7 foot longs - $5.75 foot longs, not too off base), we walked along the waterfront from Queens Wharf to the Contemporary Art Museum.  The exhibits were interesting and the size was just right (easy to see in under twenty minutes).  From there, we continued along the waterfront to Te Papa, the National Museum of New Zealand, and spent the next few hours exploring the six floors of collections.  The subjects ranged from art and architecture to daily New Zealand life through the generations, geology, animal life, and just about everything else.  It was a great walk-around, and we were a bit exhausted after we were done.

After consulting the list provided by a friend as to the things we needed to do in Wellington.  Finding ourselves with an afternoon to kill, we slowly made our way across the city to Lambton to get up to the Botanic Gardens, which overlook the city.  Rather than hike up the hill, Tiffany and I elected to take the cable car, akin to the “inclines” of Pittsburgh which I got to ride when I visited Jenna and Greg a few years back.  The cable cars were installed a century back when Wellington expanded up the western hills which had restricted its growth along the coast.

We boarded a cable car and took the rattling ride up the hill, past the University, to the Botanic Gardens.  We had a bit of a wander around the top of the hill that the massive gardens are perched on, looking out over the city.  We sat for a bit, soaking in the last eight days (and resting – I think we were both tired).  We sauntered back over to the cable car, but before taking the trip back down, I wandered through a small museum dedicated to the history of the cable car in Wellington.  Being the massive sucker for historic public transit that I am, I enjoyed the museum quite a bit, and was only rallied to head back down the hill when I saw just how bored Tiffany was with the whole affair.

At the bottom of the hill we walked the block back to our hotel and rested a bit before heading back out to find some Thai food (I was craving pho – a Thai soup) on Cuba Avenue.  The early dinner was good, though they didn’t have pho, and now I think we are ready for sleep and the early trip home in the morning.