A bit of mulch a at Te Papa

The first thing to confess is that I manage to stuff up our accommodation booking - so we have one more night in Wellington than we have accommodation for. Some last minute searching and a credit card get us accommodation in the Boulcott suites in the city - which turn out to be lovely.

Once lovely Matt has navigated us through the twisty turns streets and tiny tunnels - it was garbage day adding to the degree of difficulty - we park at our new accommodation. There is yet another great cafe close by for delicious coffee and breakfast and then we wander down to the Harbour side and enter Te Papa.

We had the option of Terra-cotta warriors and a big Gallipoli exhibit- but I wanted to focus on New Zealand things so we looked at all the Maori carvings and exhibits about the birds and interaction of people with the landscape. Beautiful carvings.

I don’t seem to have much to say about it but we were there for a lot of the day.

On the way back we stop at Hannah’s lane - which I had seen on one of those tourist activity snippets on a lifestyle channel. I buy some overpriced chocolate - but the soda shop on the show has gone and overall it seems less appealing than the presenter made out.  Sigh.

On our way back to our little townhouse, we picked this place to eat that specialist did in all kinds of slow roasted meats  just down the street from our hotel.  When I went out a bit later to get some extra bits from the car, I heard a “whoop whoop” evacuate now type fire alarm. I was relieved that it wasn’t our building but didn’t think much more of it.

As we go to dinner the alarm is still going - of course it is the place we had picked for dinner. It also turns out to be next to Wellington’s tallest building - so it is a bit of a drama with closed roads and 7 fire trucks.

Over all my impression is that Wellington seems like a little place and didn’t seem to me to feel like a capital city. I forgot to go on the cable car. A bit sad about that. And I haven’t seen Houses of Parliament and all those grand kind of capital city buildings - which is my bad for just not thinking of it.  But the feel of the city seemed much more homey than iconic to me. It also really is windy.