20 degrees, sunny but strong cool wind
Wandered around the quayside area roughly following the guide book suggested route in the morning. Initially Wellington looked quite a big town, based on the fairly densely packed area our hotel is in, but in reality it is quite small overall. There’s not a great deal to see if you’re not interested in shopping. Everything is very tidy, no litter – in fact we came across a worker cleaning the pubic waste bins! The city also looks finished – there’s no road works, extensive building or refurbishment going on – like Napier all the old buildings look like they were repainted yesterday.
We went into the Museum of New Zealand because it was free, and spent about an hour in there. This is a huge building of six floors and we covered the first three and saw a Maori carving, a cannon from a ship that got stuck on the Great Barrier Reef and an exhibition about flora and fauna introduced into New Zealand and the effects these have had. That was it! Not an awful lot to see so we didn’t bother with the other floors.
Up the Funicular to lookout over the harbour but not too much to occupy us up there, another botanical garden which was not as nice as the one in Napier, then down to wander over to the Parliament buildings – old and new. Interestingly there were no police or armed guards around the building, even though Parliament was sitting, and not until we looked inside a door did we see a security guard armed with a radio only.
Clare next to a tree whose name we can’t spell or pronounce – the NZ Christmas Tree.
In the afternoon we went to the pictures! (saw The Crimes of Grindelwald).
Still managed to walk 10 miles today and do 110 staircases, according to FitBit.