Windy Wellington

After the Rotorura experience, we rushed back to Auckland to get Jenn and Jim's bags from their apartment on the harbour. Made it to the airport to catch our flight to Wellington with 20 minutes to spare. Hopped on the plane and saw the first instance of the "Single Ladies" video, which set us all off laughing. (It would become a recurring theme through the trip, and would be randomly sung to make everyone laugh)

Checked into our hotel, the Abel Tasman (named after the first Dutch explorer to find New Zealand...and leave quite soon after)

First they put us in a room that had 4 single beds, concrete walls and no decorations. After asking about another room, we were moved to a room with a beautiful queen bed and a single for me. (including full earthquake evacuation procedures)

In the morning, we headed out on our tour of Wellington, guided by our awesome pipe smoking, knee high compression stocking wearing guide Alf.

Visited the sights around town including the amazing rose gardens, complete with a greenhouse with some amazing flowers.

The Old Saint Paul Cathedral (touted as the finest example of Revival Gothic Architecture in the Southern Hemisphere...)
Saw some great sights, including a great Maori Pou Tokomanawa (a big totem pole to mark land) while overlooking the city of Wellington.

As many of the cities in New Zealand are built into the hills, some people have their own private trams to get up the hills into their homes. (and the carparks -garages- are built on top of the house) This was the public tram to get from the city centre, up the hill to another part of the city.
After the city tour, we went to the Te Papa museum (Maori for "our space"). There, the museum is shaped like a fingerprint, and they have cool stuff like an earthquake simulator and a lot of dead things like kiwis and giant squid.

They also had a ceremonial and traditional Maori meetinghouse which we were able to go into after removing our shoes. This is a carving from the traditional meeting house.

And this is a sculpture from the ceremonial meeting house/theatre room...

After leaving the Te Papa museum, we headed out around town, where we stopped in at the Old Bank right downtown. This building was built in 1901, this building used to house the Bank of New Zealand until a large earthquake. This forced a reinspection of the foundation, and when the floors were opened up, people were shocked to discover a full ship buried underneath the building. Turns out a ship from Nova Scotia travelled there in the 1800s, and was unknowningly built upon in the original construction. Now the building has become a mall, and the bottom floor has glass panels where you can look down at the pieces of the ship that were discovered.


Finally, we went to an exhibition of the Terra-Cotta Warriors in the centre of town. They were reproductions of the originals, as they are too fragile to move, but was a really interesting look at them anyways.
We then got some delicious thai food, and headed back to the hotel to prepare for our ferry ride the next day.