Welly, Wellington the special place.

Wednesday, up and into Welly were after some faff with car parks found one for $9[£4.50] for 12hrs more than we needed. We headed into the I-site to get a map. From here we went to the cable cars, this is a special place as my granddad has spoken much about them and I have for years wanted to travel them. For $6[£3] each we had a return ticket to the top. It only takes around 8mins to do the journey up the hillside but it reveals and ever increasingly beautiful view over the city and the bay. The crystal blue water and equally clear sky would make anyone fall in love with the wettest place in NZ on a sunny day as today.

At the top is a museum about the cable cars, here we had a quick look around. Also at the top is an entrance to the botanic gardens which were somewhat disappointing, however a hedgehog who was out and about did provide some entertainment. We returned back to the busy city below where we moved through to the ‘Beehive’ or officially the parliament buildings. Its easy to see why its called the beehive, it’s a massive round hive shape, which looks almost out of place next to the rest of the parliament house, both of which are earthquake proof, or Risk reduced. We took the free tour around and although neither of us really enjoyed the politics side of it, the building and characteristic’s where of interest.

Outside we met another of Amanda’s friends, Dom, nice chap. We wandered back towards town where I left them to head off to the MacPac store. I ended up getting the $99[£50] down armless jacket and a base layer which will come in use in San Fran and NYC. I meet up with them at a bar nearby. Here we watched some Maori’s jumping of a set of diving steps into the sea, it did look like fun.

From here we headed on and did some shopping before going to get our boat. The ferry sailing was calm and we even managed to stay inside without Amanda feeling too bad, I feel asleep in a seat and woke up the other end after our $1 cakes.

We arrived in Picton at around 00:30 were we drove for around 5 mins to find the pub car park we were parking in for free, it was ok.