Wellington - Sunday, 1/20/08

Our hotel in Wellington is great. It is a one bedroom suite with a separate living/kitchen area, very much like our Auckland lodging. This type of facility seems readily available here and in Australia so we will be traveling in a bit more luxury than we normally would at home.

After our fruits and berries breakfast, Mary threw in a load of wash and then we headed down to Te Papa museum which is the national museum of NZ. It is exceptionally well done and we spent a couple hours learning about the formation of the southern continents and the populating of NZ in particular. We have been steeped in 19th century history since we arrived and had hoped for more from the last 150 years but that was not to be.

We walked back outside to a perfect day—bright blue skies, 72-degrees and a little breeze off the water. We had lunch just off the wharf at Macs brewery (Mary, chicken salad; John, Thai fish cakes) but being the good soldiers, we skipped a perfectly good opportunity to sit in the sunshine and drink beer all afternoon.

We headed down the wharf and stopped for a bit at an all-day outdoor concert that was sponsored by the city of Wellington and gave a bunch of local bands an hour of fame. A huge group of folks were mellowing out on a really nice Sunday afternoon. Being good soldiers we skipped a perfectly good opportunity to mellow out, and kept on going.

We wandered back near our hotel and caught the cable car up the hill to the botanical gardens. We worked our way back down through the gardens which were in full bloom and took advantage of unbelievable views of the city and harbor. We popped out of the gardens at Tinakori road and followed that through a cool neighborhood of shops and restaurants back down to Parliament and, a block later, our hotel. We picked up a couple muffins for breakfast, and still-good soldier Mary finished the laundry while John did the more important work of researching dinner options.

Not only is it a Sunday night, but it is followed by a Monday holiday. Our first choice could squeeze us in at 5:30 (too early), our second choice was closed, and our third choice that did not take reservations turned out to be closed as well. We finally settled on our fourth choice (the Matterhorn) for pub food and got seated at about 9:00, tired and a little crabby. They won us over with some good NZ Pinot, a trio playing some jazz in the corner and great fried chicken (Mary) and rare roast beef (John). After walking about 10 miles during the day, we both slept really well.

Today’s Local Headline: NZ’s Houses world’s least affordable New Zealand Herald