A cultural Day in the Capital City

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Geo: -41.2865, 174.776

13th May Wellington

We have been very lucky with the weather so far, considering it is late autumn here, but the rain finally caught up with us today.

Wellington has been called San Francisco's twin – it has a wonderful waterside location, is hilly, has a cable car and is prone to earthquakes. It is also notoriously windy but we managed to stay upright today. Although we have only had a couple of days here it definitely seems to be a very "livable" place. Alan is glad to be back in a city. He says that scenery is scenery but every city is different ! Hey ho, you can take the boy out of Hong Kong but...!

We spent the first part of the day in the Parliamentary District, the focus of which is three very different government buildings: The Beehive, built in the 1970s, houses the Cabinet and ministerial offices, the Parliament Building is suitably sober in design while the Assembly Library is described in the guidebook as “frivolous Victorian Gothic”. We tried to have a peep inside the National Library but it is currently closed for refurbishment – a former BL colleague and friend is one of the consultants on the project so good luck to her.

Not to be outdone by the Mother Country, New Zealand's capital boasts not one but TWO St Paul's Cathedrals – one a beautiful wooden building constructed in the 1860s but closed in 1964 in favour of the other which is a huge, cavernous modern edifice. There was a plan to demolish Old St Paul's but a public outcry led to its being saved and restored. Though no longer a parish church it is still consecrated and popular for weddings, funerals and concerts.

In view of the rather damp weather we decided to spend the afternoon in the state-of-the-art Te Papa Museum. It is full of high-tech, interactive displays so we spent a fascinating 5 hours there. Interesting factoid 1: the ocean-going canoes used by the first Maori settlers to New Zealand in the 13th century were longer, faster and could accommodate more people than Captain Cook's ship Endeavour. Interesting factoid 2: the tuatara, an ancient species of reptile found nowhere else but NZ, lives for over a hundred years and breathes just once every hour. They must be very good at yoga.

Since we were back in a big city we took the opportunity to stroll around the shops and check out the nightlife. Even though this is the capital most of the shops shut around 5.30 and apart from Courtney Place (the equivalent of Leicester Square) things seem to be pretty quiet after 6. Alan summed it up as being a bustling, modern capital city during the day but with a rather small-town feel in the evening. Perhaps we weren't in the right places so we stand to be corrected by party animal Wellingtonians.

Back to Auckland tomorrow and the adventure continues...

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Comments

[Lynda]

Loved your factoids :)

[Sybil]

It's hard to keep up with you two! How many days will you need to recover when you get back to Old Blighty?

[alan-hamish]

We'll just have to keep going on holiday..! :-)

[Tim]

just the place for a hung parliament

[wendykobayashi]

Salut, les gars! Not even going to try to pretend I am managing to keep up with ALL the details of your travelogues, but loving the photos and oh-so-clever captions... Alan-chan, o-tanjoubi omedetou!! Hope you have a super-adventurous da
y with plenty of cake. Lots of love from us, Wendy xxx

[Vicki]

former BL colleague and friend here! What do you think of the Library building?