Wellington, NZ

We were welcomed to Wellington with blue skies and warm temperatures today!  This was a pleasant change from some of our other stops.  Wellington, the capital of New Zealand, has a lot to offer.  It sits on the Cook Strait at the southern tip of New Zealand’s North Island.  The Cook Strait separates the North and South islands.

We began our day by taking the cable car 390 feet up to see dramatic views of the city’s rolling hills, the downtown area, and the harbor.   The botanical garden was just coming alive in the early Spring, and the tulips were spectacular!   

We then made our way to the Te Papa Museum which focused heavily on the Maori, but also housed a lot of interactive information on New Zealand’s earthquakes and volcanos.  It also had a display of a colossal squid that had been caught several years ago.  But the newest and most popular display was about New Zealand’s involvement in World War I at Gallipoli.   The huge life-like WWI soldiers displayed looked amazingly real.   The museum was very modern and used state of the art technology in its interactive displays. 

The city was very clean and the locals were very friendly.  The botanical gardens and the museums in Wellington were both free to the public; an unusual concept for us Americans.

For shoppers, the souvenir that we saw the most was gloves and scarves made from merino mink.  This is actually made from part sheep and part possum!  This came about because possums, which are not native to New Zealand, were brought here by the Aussies and were very destructive.  So, they found a use for them!    They were soft to the touch, but it wasn’t something I felt compelled to purchase.