We’ve having a very good time in Wellington, New Zealand with Cathy and our two grandchildren
We arrived here last Thursday and have had an active time with mild, but very windy weather. This city has really been living up to its name of being ‘Windy Wellington’. Yesterday we saw a woman literally holding on to the traffic light pole to avoid being blown away as she tried to cross the road outside our hotel.
We’ve been eating well in the steakhouse restaurant at the hotel and along the harbour front at Wagamama.
We spent one day at the Te Papa National Museum which has some excellent exhibits of local Maori culture. The girls were very interested in seeing them and had a lot of fun dressing up as Air New Zealand crew in the exhibit that celebrates the airlines 75 years of flying.
We drove to the top of Mt Victoria from where we could look over the city and the airport and then around the coast to a neat little cafe where we had a snack for morning tea. From there we drove up the coast to Paraparaumu (which everyone found difficult too pronounce) for lunch and a play in the playground near the beach.
We had a shopping day on Saturday and braved the drizzly rain and windy day by visiting a number of shops. Most of our brand names are evident here and it felt a lot like we were just shopping at home, but with higher prices. Over my time in visiting Wellington, the focal point of the city has shifted to the area around the harbour front and away from the area around Cuba Streetv which now looks to have become quite an ‘alternate’area. On a nice day, the harbour area is alive and attractive.
Today we are driving to the little town of Martinborough for a visit to the Wairarapa wine area and a change of scenery in the country.
