Wellington

View of Wellington from the Botanical Gardens

Day 3 saw us heading South towards Wellington. Quite a journey from Napier, we travelled through Manawatu - wide open, flat, farming country. Very pretty if you like that sort of thing, reminded me of Norfolk, but not enough hills for my liking! Palmerston North was the first city we went through - big, open and non-descript like the countryside around it, then on to the town of Feilding, voted NZs best kept town or somesuch. Very well ordered and pleasant but again rather too flat for me. After all this exposure to the central plains of NZ it was time for a few hills, so we continued South on highway 2 through the Wairarapa and into Wellington. Wow. What a place. The scenery completely transforms from the flat open stuff into stunning mountain gorges and dense forest. The road travels across a high mountain pass and is somewhat precipitous - I concentrated very hard on the road and tried not to look down!

We arrived in Wellington at night and after a spot of confused driving around, checked into the Hotel De Wheels in the centre of town. Check out the link, because this place has a very interesting past!

Wellington Harbour

The next day we got to explore Wellington properly and I have to say, we were both blown away by what a beautiful and buzzing city it is. The centre is full of public spaces, parks and art works, and has a thriving cafe culture. It seems more lively than Auckland, and a much more attractive place to be. I think we've found where we'll be heading after December!

Wellington Centre

We checked out the museum of New Zealand - Te Papa, which was seriously impressive, although I find I get "museumed out" after a couple of hours. It's the sort of place you could keep going back to and there would always be something new to look at. Next we decided a bit of fresh air and exercise was called for and so trooped off to the Botanical Gardens. There are some great walks (mostly over 12k long!) based around there so we had a bit of a wander before staggering back to the hotel in an exhausted state!