Wellington

We arrived in Wellington in the evening after a long drive. It’s very difficult to find cheap accommodation in Wellington, especially with parking, so we were happy when one of the recommendations in Lonely Planet had availability. It had been a long day of driving so we went out to get some food, did a quick walk around Wellington, and headed back to our room for an early night. The next day we woke up early and headed out on the town. Our first stop was Te Papa (kind of like our science centre), which was free so we took full advantage of that. It had a lot of information on how NZ was formed, the Maori customs, the different wildlife and a lot of information about the fault lines NZ is on and how earthquakes affect the country. From there, we visited a free art gallery but it was one of those weird ones where the art isn’t really art, it’s just strange. An example of an exhibit was 2 TV sets next to each other, with one running a video of a lady giving birth and the other one of a lady in her last moments of live just as she’s dying in her bed. I believe it was called Life & Death. Of course there was a plaque to describe how the “artist” thought it was profound to see the two images sides by side, one lady giving life and the other one dying. For us it was just disturbing.

We followed the recommended walking tour in lonely planet, and we also did a tour of the NZ parliament building. We also drove to the top of Mont. Victoria to see the view of Wellington from the top. We also went to see where the ferry was leaving from that we would be taking the following day to Picton, South Island.