We drove to Wellington on Saturday. It was quite a long drive south. Our next stop, Napier, is another long drive north again. Wellington really is quite far from everything. If it weren't the capital I think we wouldn't have bothered. I suppose it's down here so the South Island doesn't feel too left out.
On Sunday we went to the National Museum - Te Papa - and have a good butchers there. It's quite impressive, with lots of displays about Maori culture and NZ history (what there is of it). There were some interesting displays about earthquakes, of which there are many in NZ.
Our hostel gives us free wine at 7pm, so we made sure we were in the dining room then. It's really poor quality, I'm sure, but it is free.
Today, Monday (though the blog posting probably has Sunday over it - the blog's in GMT and we're 13 hours ahead), we were up and out in good time to go and do a tour of the Parliament. The tour lasted a bit over an hour, and was very good. First, we were taken into the basement and shown a line that had been cut throughout the building, separating it from the foundations. This is to minimise earthquake damage. The building is placed on special springy things (I think that was the technical term, but can't be sure) and can wobble rather than fall over during an earthquake. Anne and I are hoping for at least a tremor while we're here. (We'd probably make fools of ourselves by running around screaming if it happened.)
Today's the first nice sunny day we've had in the North Island. We were expecting bad weather in the South Island, but had generally good weather, especially on the West Coast where we're told it rains all the time. Now we're in the North, where people told us it'd be nice, and we've seen little sun. (It has been muggy and uncomfortable though.)
Typically, on this nice sunny day, we have tickets to see The Two Towers (Extended Version) at 2.15pm. Ho hum.