Tuesday 29th January

After a late(ish) breakfast, we set off for Te Papa museum. It almost seemed a shame to be going indoors as the weather was very bright and sunny, but this was going to be our last day in Wellington and we’d read so much about the museum we just had to visit. It certainly is an imposing modern building and beautifully laid out but we were slightly disappointed by the content. There’s a lot of space and, by comparison, few exhibits. The earthquake experience was not what we’d expected or even hoped, just a jiggling around with nothing flying off the shelves or falling over (well, what do you think happens in a 6.5 Richter scale quake?). We latched on to one of the tour guides for a short time – we hadn’t paid for the guided tour!! – and he was very interesting and funny in his descriptive lesson on the cause and effect of earthquakes.

Some of the displays were being renovated and others had changed location so I’m sure we missed some out but the information layout in some areas is not very clear. In most of the displays you can easily start at the wrong end and work backwards and, as we’re now in our dotage, it can be very confusing! However, we found enough to interest us for 3 and a half hours, including having a coffee and a not very nice cookie. Then it was back out into the sunshine and another bit of exploring of the city before heading back to our quaint lodgings.

We had arranged to visit Nick and his family in Petone, a 20 minute drive from the city so drove over there a little early and had a wander round their very pleasant shopping area, before getting to their house just before 7.00pm. We were in time to take a few photos of Jacob (22 months) and Violet (4 months) with Nick and Louisa before the children went to bed. Jacob was very shy but who wouldn’t be faced with 2 total strangers just before bedtime? (Especially Tom!!) It was a lovely evening. We worked out that the last time we saw Nick was about 24 years ago when he was still at school!

While we were looking round the Pak’nSave supermarket in Petone, we saw some bottles of wine which we just had to buy. They are bottled in NZ by Purr Productions and a contribution from the sale goes to the SPCA for use in animal welfare. If you read this before Tom uploads the piccies, you’ll just have to wait to see why we bought them. Unfortunately, we’re not going to be able to bring any home so you’ll just have to rely on us to tell us what they taste like!!!
As we had to be up early on Wednesday morning for the ferry, we weren’t late back and packed up as much as we could before falling into bed.