Wellington

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We arrived in Wellington 2 days ago, taking the ferry from the the south island to the north island. It was the nicest ferry I've ever been on! It had a cafe, a bar, a food court, a movie theater, all sorts of areas to sit in facing different directions, and a play area for kids. Bizarrely enough, it also had TVs you could watch, and they were all set to show Dr Phil. Oh well. We got to our bed and breakfast, which is on one of the hills.

Wellington reminds me a lot of San Francisco- very hilly, lots of Victorian era buildings, and it has its very own cable car! Yesterday, we spent a good 5 hours in Te Papa, their national museum (sort of like a mini Smithsonian). One floor was about the natural history of New Zealand. Another floor was about the Maori, which was very interesting, and the immigrants that have come to New Zealand. It is a beautiful museum, and the exhibits were all very well done. Then we took a quick trip through a tiny art museum, and then spent about an hour in the Wellington Museum of City and Sea, which gave a lot of the history of the city and had a very dramatic little documentary about the Wahine disaster, a ferry that ran aground in the Wellington harbor during the worst storm ever documented in Wellington. 57 people died (I think that's the number). And since it was in the 1950s (I think that's when it was), there was real video footage. Pretty chilling stuff. I am glad that we had already taken the ferry before seeing this!

Then last night, we went to a phenomenal restaurant, compliments of dad and Joyce. It had a degustation menu with 10 little courses (including an amuse bouche, palate cleanser (basil and peach sorbet, fantastic!) and 1 glass of methode traditionale sparkling white wine and 6 half glasses of wine that were paired incredibly well with the food. I think that all but two of the wines were from New Zealand.

This morning, we took the cable car up the hill and wandered around the botanical gardens for 2 hours or so. It was a good 45 minute walk to the cable car in the first place, so we've done a lot of walking today! Then we went to a brewery restaurant on the harbor for lunch. We have a flight to Auckland later this afternoon. How sad, our trip is almost to an end.

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