Wellington, New Zealand

Wellington, New Zealand

Feb 17

Eastern Time plus 18 hours

We decided to do Wellington on our own with Stirling and Clare. We set off at 9:30 AM equipped with a guidebook and map. We rode a shuttle into town and noticed all the beautiful flowers lining the streets. We saw this in all 3 of the New Zealand cities we visited.

The architecture was interesting. Many buildings had the original buildings on the bottom but were topped with more modern architecture.

We rode the Wellington Cable Car to the top. Wellington is very hilly and we felt it by the end of the day. We did a huge amount of walking up and down the hills.

Once we got to the top we were talked into a free trip to the oldest house in Wellington. It ended up taking much more time than we thought, so wasn't really worth the time in the end.

The cable car ended at the top of a huge hill. There were great views from there and it was also the start of the Botanical Gardens that Wellington is famous for. We spent about 1 1/hours walking though the gardens on our way down the hill to the city.

The largest of these blooms were about 10 inches across.

There was also an old cemetery with very interesting stories on the tombstones.

We then went and toured the parliament building that is nicknamed The Beehive.

Last, but not least, came the Backbencher Pub. We had lunch and some well-deserved liquid refreshments.

On our return from the ship we had a Maori Cultural show. Jeff still wasn't feeling too well, and he went back to bed.

Sail away was interesting. It was very windy so we had to be pulled away from the pier.

Then these characters came along. They had a loudspeaker and kept yelling out, “Hey Queenie!” followed by various messages. One of them was about how they had 127 suitcases and wanted to board us. As they got closer, we saw they did have a lot of suitcases!

Wellington was fine, but of the 3 New Zealand ports, it was our least favorite. We loved both Auckland and Napier.