The Wandering Chocoholic

I’ve made it to the southern tip of the North Island: Wellington, New Zealand’s capital city. Wellington is nicknamed New Zealand’s “windy city” and it’s easy to understand why, the minute you step outside. Perhaps fittingly, every third establishment seems to be a hairdresser.

The drive down from Taupo took about six hours, part of it on the “Desert Road”, nicknamed that way because of the surrounding terrain. On the way, we stopped for a photo op of the volcanic Mount Ngauruhoe, which I’m told was used as Mount Doom in many scenes of the Lord of the Rings movies. Never having seen them myself, I’ll take everyone’s word for it and assume this might mean something to some of you.

Wellington itself is a fairly small city, and the weather has been rainy and dreary the past couple of days so maybe I’m not getting the best impression of it. It’s got lots of shops and restaurants and office buildings and everything most big cities have. It’s also the main ferry crossing point for the south island, so many travellers are in transit here. The central business district is built in a valley on the waterfront, and residential expansion has moved upwards.

This morning, I rode the quaint funicular-like cable car up to the Botanical Gardens, and spent some time having a leisurely walk through them, emerging near the Parliament Buildings. The executive building is nicknamed the “beehive” (see the photo for why). I took a guided tour of Parliament, which was pretty interesting. The buildings are built right next to a major fault line, and so they’ve had to use some engineering ingenuity to prevent them from being constantly destroyed by the many earthquakes experienced annually. After Parliament, I stopped in at Te Papa, New Zealand’s national museum, to have a look around at some of the exhibits.

Tomorrow, I leave the North Island and head south. Everyone coming the other way seems to like the South Island better, so I’m looking forward to it.