Beehive and Beers in Wellington

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Day 551 (30.09.08)

We'd looked into options to get to the north island to continue our tour of New Zealand and found that the cheapest way was actually to fly, it would also be a lot quicker and allow us to pack more into our remaining time here. With our transfer to the country's capital booked for a ridiculous time in the morning we woke, finished packing and were in the shuttle bus to the airport by 5am. The rest of our journey through to Wellington also proved as smooth and we found ourselves walking into the reception of the YHA in Wellingtons City Centre by 8.30 - not bad - the only issue being that we couldn't check in until 2pm - damn!

Chucking the bags into storage we had a morning to kill before we could get into the room and decided, as it was raining, to visit one of Wellington's famous landmarks - Te Papa, the national museum of NZ. Te Papa is well worth a visit if you ever find yourself in Wellington even if you are not a fan of Museums. With 4 floors and loads to see and do we whiled away the morning having a great time. We particularly liked the interactive Ourspace with a huge illuminated satellite map of the country which we spent some time poring over to follow our past and future routes around the country. It also had a huge 'wall' that you were able to put picture, videos, text etc. on with a magic wand to represent your time in NZ, so much fun.

Making our way back to the hostel - and feeling pretty knackered from our early morning we opted for a lazy afternoon of snoozing, reading and a film in the evening.

Day 552 (1.10.08)

As the capital of NZ, Wellington has all the buildings related to parliament and we decided that we should make a visit to them. As we arrived we caught sight of the 'Beehive', the government office building linked to parliament house. We took the free tour around the parliament buildings which was excellent, taught us a fair bit about political processes in NZ and allowed us into many of the important lawmaking rooms.

Our next activity was a trip up the hill on the city's famous red cable car. We made the journey to the top with many others (school holidays have hit) and talk a walk around the botanical gardens at the top, having some fun with the human sundial near the observatory. After taking in the great views of the city and harbour we cabled it back down to town to continue our wanderings. We walked through the old bank arcades to Civic square where a large silver fern ball seems to float over the lovely buildings around the edges. After a walk along the waterfront we went back into Te Papa to see a little more and visited amongst other things the interesting Maori section.

We finished the day with a beer (or two) from Mac's bar and brewery and sat outside sipping our pints in the last of the day's sunshine.

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Photos

Coffee at Te Papa
Not something we usually do!

Govt buildings
the library