New Zealand - Wellington

Wellington - the Capital - has more of an artistic feel than Auckland - or so the books say. It's also fair to say it's mostly walkable. Addam's family chambers to the waterfront was less than 15 minutes. It's also obviously got a University in the centre and has far too many 'bohemian' types walking around for it to actually be taken seriously.

We were again amazingly fortunate to find our only full day scheduled here was blue sky and sunshine. Not t-shirt and shorts weather but only one coat needed!

There's some pretty funky art and buildings around the Civic Centre but we didn't have enough time to visit everything. We spent the bulk of the morning at Te Papa - the Museum of New Zealand.

Now one of the things you find in NZ is that most towns exist for some reason associated with forestry, farming, gold, gum or some other commodity that was found back in the 1800's. Consequently, there were pioneer types ripping out trees left right and centre and farming for the great British Empire. Sadly this removed most of the natural vegetation but these pioneers faced pretty grim conditions. Nearly every town we've been through has had some minor museum tracking it's history. With the exception on the Kauri museum we'd not stopped - therefore Te Papa was a really interesting place.

Firstly, it's great for kids - so I really enjoyed it. There's loads of hands on stuff, things to try and lots to see. We watched a cool 3D short animated film about hw the preserved giant squid on display came to be at the museum, saw assorted stuffed animals (and skeletons e.g. pygmy blue whale hung from the ceiling). Which, by the way, reminds me that on the way to Wellington we did pass the museum of taxidermy. We tried to get in but it was stuffed inside.

There's things on natural history - a roll call of extinct species and currently endangered, loads on tectonics including a house that vibrates like in a quake and a platform you have to jump on to be rated as an earthquake...after a poor first effort I managed a scale 6! No idea what it meant but I got to jump around a lot.

Bizarrely, there was a corporate event on as well - it was the New Zealand Orthopaedic Association - we could see the De Puy stand just inside the door. I tried to get Alice to go in so we could claim flights on the company but there was nothing happening.

Big chunks of the museum were devoted to Maori culture while another equally large focussed on all the other migrants that have come and gone - tracing the Scottish, Irish, English, Indian, Australian etc immigrants as they came for new lives. All in all, a pretty fun museum with some great stuff - including Alice's best hot chocolate to date!

After lunch we managed to get our tyre looked at at Tony's Tyres (coincidence - nothing to do with our Tony). Twenty minutes later we had a shiny new valve, inflated tyres and swapped spare. Cracking service and for free - which is even better as the rental company told us they would charge us and we'd have to claim on the insurance.

In the afternoon we took the cable car up to the botanic gardens (or technically we were taken up in it - I hoped you'd know what I meant). Actualy a tram like thing similar to that which took us up Victoria Peak in Hong Kong but an infinitely more pleasurable experience. The Botanic Garden was in good colour but was somewhat steep in places. Hard work!

We therefore rewarded ourselves with tea in a pub called the Malthouse. It had a beer menu...with 15 pages of beers...roughly ten per page...though only about 24 were on draft. I had a cracking IPA (not the Brew Dog stuff - in stock but what was the point?). Closest thing to a real ale pub I'd found. Out of defference to one of my staff I tried the Townsend No. 9 Stout - it should have been a half pint - but a full pinta was ordered. It was allegedly cask conditioned - this meant it was the barrel sat on the bar which they lifted to tip forward to get beer out - it was very black...more so than Guinness and let no light through. I didn't finish it - we have a ferry crossing to contend with the following day and I was concerned that could unsettle me!