February 2 - Around Wellington

A day off to play tourist and do some chores.  Cloudy and windy - a good day to not be pedaling against the wind.  I got up early and walked around the parliament buildings - a lot of their buildings are from the era between 1880 and 1910.  What really impressed me was how packed and dense the inner city is.  Tall (10 story) buildngs in a real hodge podge of streets - nothing laid out in squares in this town.

After breakfast we toured bike shops to buy a helmet mirror (Laura broke hers) and to poke.  Then we parted ways as Laura went shopping and got her hair cut (it looks great - styled so as to avoid 'helmet head').

So, here are some of my tourist photos:
The cable car up to the Botanical Gardens, of course.






The second photo is of one of the original cable cars.  Note how you can sit outside on angled seats.  I poked through the cable car museum - great stuff for an engineer to look at.

These shots in the Botanical Gardens are of the threatened Species Garden and of the Rose Garden
with the greenhouses behind.

Here's a view of houses on the hill - it really shows how they've fit them onto the hill on the steep slopes.

Back to the top of the hill and a picture of the original Dominion Obsdervatory.  The gun in front wasn't for harbour defense; it was a captured WW1 German cannon given to New Zealand as a gift.

Downtown now and a shot of the original NZ Bank building; now a shopping arcade - typical architecture of the older downtown buildings.

On my way to the museum in the afternoon I noticed somebody had dumped a box of detergent into a local fountain - foam everywhere.  There are pranksters (UBC Engineers?) all over the world.

My last visit waas to the the Te Papa museum.  It's free (as were all the attractions I visited today).  Tremendously interesting place - the main impressions I got were of the amount of volcanic activity in New Zealand and of the concern over the number of introduced species into the country and the effect on the land.  Unfortunately, photography wasn't allowed.

We chowed down on a great pub meal tonight, starting with NZ Green Lipped Mussels.  

Tomorrow we're off to the South Island on the ferry and will probably stay in Picton.  This is our proposed route from Picton to Queenstown.  We'll see how it goes - we may cut across early to avoid the west coast weather.