FLASHBACK: Windy Welly! The Capital City of Wellington

What trip to a capital city would be complete without seeing the seat of government. Unlike the US's Washington, Wellington has a limited number of government buildings and very few memorials/statues. The two most famous ones are shown here (but don't ask me who the statue is supposed to be).

The building on the left is the Beehive building built in the 1960s. I was super psyched when I heard about it, but I didn't see a photo till we walked to it from our hostel. It doesn't look like a beehive at all to me! Its all silver & white & there are the huge windows on the bottom floor. The shape is sort of half a beehive, I suppose, but honestly, I was very disappointed. The tour was interesting, speaking about the structure of NZ's federal government and getting to see where legislation is debated or crafted was also great. Only wish was a more appropriate named building.

We were in Wellington for a few days and we did LOTS of walking. One of the coolest things we thought was to see the whole city from on top of a nearby hill, but you'll never guess how we got up there...a wicked red cable car. This shot is good enough to put on our own postcard! It shows are cable car going back down the hill straight into the heart of a shopping district. On top of the hill was a neighborhood constructed for people who worked in the financial/government section of downtown. The cable car was built in the early 20th cent.


After getting off the car, we headed into the cable car museum. They had several old cars on display and some diagrams about the cable car hoisting system. It was a great museum & next to botanical gardens. We went on a short hike, saw an observatory, and finally found this bench where we snapped a picture. Wellington sure had some blue skies and was a bit windy too.

We spent the rest of that day walking along the waterfront and checking out another museum that included artifacts from the city of Wellington. On the dock, I found this wonderful large pipe that allowed me to yell all the way back to the US.

Too bad I missed the exact same pipe behind me that really just channeled my yelling to the other side of the parking lot.

Funny thing about this photo. See just at my feet something casting a shadow? That's a guide book of New Zealand that MaryEd allowed us to borrow. After this shot, I forgot to grab it & Cam & I walked off another mile down the road before I realized it. Luckily, Cam ran while I walked back to the spot & it was still there. PHEW! We would have had bad trip if I had lost it for good. The worst part, we were on our feet for 10 hrs that day & were very tired.


The next day we headed to Te Pappa, one of the best museums I have ever been to in my life. You all should know how that really means something as I have visited a fair share of museums in my day. This one was absolutely fantastic: hands on, lots to read or just look at photos, spectacular exhibits, videos, side shows, the works. We saw a colossal squid, took funny photos & put them up on a huge screen & wrote & moved them, learned about Aboriginal family symbols and made rubbings of them in a replica celebration structure (photo). And most of it was free...an absolute steal. I think we donated $20 just because it was that good.

If anyone goes to New Zealand, you have to go to this museum.