A Wellington New Year

Full Moon On New Years Eve on Wellington Harbor


01-02-10

Happy New Year everyone! It is now finally 2010 all around the world. We hope everyone had a very safe and joyous celebration. We enjoyed a quiet celebration since it has been pretty quiet in Wellington. I believe I mentioned that the Kiwi’s pretty much shut it down where there is a holiday involved. Well I thought that New Year’s weekend in Wellington might be a little different but I was wrong. Very wrong!

Since arriving in Wellington last Thursday, we’ve scrambled to find restaurants that are open. More than once we ended up settling on our seventh or eighth choice just so we got some food. But I will quit complaining because after all, we are on vacation.

Since we’ve been to Wellington before, we did some things that we didn’t do last time we were here. One was to visit Te Papa. Te Papa is New Zealand’s national museum. It has been recognized worldwide as an innovator for interactive exhibits. Te Papa is a large museum standing 6 stories high on the shores of Wellington Harbor. One could easily spend three days going through all the different exhibits but we decided to do it in one. While we didn’t see everything, what we saw was impressive and informative.

Today we were originally thinking that we might take a walk on Somes-Matiu Island which sits in the middle of Wellington Harbor but the weather didn’t feel like cooperating with us. So instead we jumped into our little hotrod Ford Focus and took a drive up the west coast of the North Island just exploring the countryside. We didn’t have any particular plan and so we had fun just seeing where we might end up.
And that is pretty much all I have to report on Wellington. Tomorrow we head off to Masterton by way of Castlepoint. The original plan had us going to Castlepoint on the way to Napier but we decided to do it a day early since otherwise the drive would be a real killer.

So until we get to Napier….

Cheers!