Were again at sea all night and arrived in Wellington around 8:00 this morning. Today we had nothing really planned so decided to take the shuttle into Wellington and walk around. The shuttle dropped us right in front of the Parliament building (Wellington is the capital) so we walked in and asked if we could get a tour. They happened to have a couple of cancellations so we got in. We learned about their parliamentary form of government (mostly) and it seems much simpler than ours. The capital is called the “Beehive” and next to it is the Parliament building itself and the last building is the Library. Beautiful buildings, great tour leader. About 20 people in the tour group.
Next stop was to take the cable car up the mountain behind town. Someone bought a large piece of land on the hill above town at the turn of the century but it was hard to convince people to build a house up there so they created the cable car and sold the lots. It was originally run by steam engine but converted to electric motors in 1937. And it still runs regularly today. We had coffee at the shop at the top of the cable car and then visited the cable car museum next door.
Then down the cable car and walk to the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tingarewa across town. Nice walkable town with lots of public spaces.
It’s a large multistory museum and we were only able to absorb the Gallipoli exhibition. Gallipoli was a terrible defeat of beautiful young men. War is stupid!! We did see more Polynesian history but our museum circuit breakers went off and we walked back to the shuttle stop. Along the way we saw teenagers diving off a high dive into the harbor. No lawyers down here I guess!
Back to the ship and we had coffee with the wonderful couple from Montreal. He is 92 and entertained us with exciting stories of his life. The have been married 60 years and are very sharp and active.
We took short naps around 4:15 to get ready for the Azamazing evening back in town. Dinner was early and it was raining when we all left the ship on shuttle buses at 7 pm to go into a church to hear and orchestra and Maori choir. They organized us by what floor we were on and it went very smoothly. I was almost brought to tears by how beautiful the Maori voices and songs were, especially with a full orchestra behind them. They also played some traditional Mozart music. Then somehow we all seemingly made it back to the ship in the rain. The ship set sail around 10 pm. Tomorrow we stop in Picton.
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