Tom’s been out this morning, logged on wirelessly from outside the other motel, and posted what I wrote yesterday. He was also able to put on pics for the 28th and 29th. It’s easy to keep the blog up to date.- we can do that from an internet café if we don’t have wireless access. But we need to have the laptop on line if we want to choose, resize and upload pictures. As a result, we’re still running behind with pics but hope you all go back occasionally and catch up with the additions. We’re going to have a day in Christchurch today so will fill you in this evening.
Evening
What a busy day we’ve had. I don’t know how many kms we’ve walked but it must be a fair few. We started off by driving to the Antarctic Centre near the airport
– they make you pay for car parking on top of entry fees, cheeky lot! But the exhibition is well worth a visit, even though, again, it wasn’t quite as their brochure makes out. They show seals, king penguins and an albatross on their brochure, but there aren’t any except on video. They advertise an Antarctic storm but there’s no blowing snow, only wind, and the Antarctic Hagglund ride (snow cat) takes place on a purpose built outdoor concrete course with no sign of anything Antarctic at all. Apart from that disappointment, the displays are excellent and the NZ little blue penguins are so cute. 
They are the smallest penguins in the world and all the ones at the centre are rescued, so have various injuries or disabilities. One has only one leg, he had to have a foot amputated after getting caught up in some fishing line; another is blind and several have damaged wings; one will only be hand fed on land but the staff are trying to encourage it to feed in the water like the others, and one has a damaged wing so only swims in continuous barrel rolls. We spent over 3 hours there so obviously enjoyed it immensely even with the exaggerated claims.
Once we’d had the obligatory coffee and sticky, we drove back to the motel then set off to walk into the city. It’s about 2kms into the centre from here. First stop was the Cathedral. It has some superb windows
and some mosaics on the walls which just look like paintings until you get a little closer. The organist was practising and also the choir could be heard in one of the back rooms, so that added to the atmosphere. Outside, in the Cathedral square, there were craft stalls and a piper playing. 
He was only a young lad and played beautifully. As we can’t get net access here, we went to an internet shop and sent an e-mail to my brother, congratulating him on his forthcoming nuptials – oh how I wish we could be there, but we’ll celebrate once we get together in the summer.
We walked on over the river Avon up to the Art Centre where there is a huge array of craft shops – just about any form of craft you can imagine is there and all of an extremely high standard. There had been lots of stalls in the square at the front of the Centre, but unfortunately, by the time we got there, they were closing up.
Just beyond the Centre are the Botanic gardens – Wellington, eat your heart out!
The gardens are beautiful, the formal beds are all itemised on a board so if you see something you like and don’t know what it is, you can look at the index and find it. One of the herbaceous borders was first planted in the 1800’s and they have retained the planting layout as near to the original as possible. Many of the trees are really old and huge, all named, and although the ground is showing signs of the drought conditions that are prevailing at the moment, the overall effect is still inspiring. We didn’t have the energy to walk all the gardens, but on our way out via the rose garden, we met a man with the most colourful bird we’ve ever seen. It was a Rainbow Lorrakeet? from Australia. The colours were so bright they looked unreal and it was so tame, just sitting on his hand or shoulder, making no attempt to escape.
So, invigorated by something so pretty, we trekked our way home deciding that we’d eat in again tonight as we have to be up early for our TranzAlpine adventure tomorrow. We’re having a couple of glasses of wine as I write this then it’ll be goodnight all.
Tom’s addition. Oh how sad. Poor Argentina have just been stuffed by England in the NZI Rugby Sevens. Ok, so we were rubbish yesterday, but today we’ve just won the silver bowl, and, did I mention, that in the final we stuffed the Argentinians?
Good game, good wine, goodnight.
Evening
What a busy day we’ve had. I don’t know how many kms we’ve walked but it must be a fair few. We started off by driving to the Antarctic Centre near the airport
– they make you pay for car parking on top of entry fees, cheeky lot! But the exhibition is well worth a visit, even though, again, it wasn’t quite as their brochure makes out. They show seals, king penguins and an albatross on their brochure, but there aren’t any except on video. They advertise an Antarctic storm but there’s no blowing snow, only wind, and the Antarctic Hagglund ride (snow cat) takes place on a purpose built outdoor concrete course with no sign of anything Antarctic at all. Apart from that disappointment, the displays are excellent and the NZ little blue penguins are so cute. They are the smallest penguins in the world and all the ones at the centre are rescued, so have various injuries or disabilities. One has only one leg, he had to have a foot amputated after getting caught up in some fishing line; another is blind and several have damaged wings; one will only be hand fed on land but the staff are trying to encourage it to feed in the water like the others, and one has a damaged wing so only swims in continuous barrel rolls. We spent over 3 hours there so obviously enjoyed it immensely even with the exaggerated claims.Once we’d had the obligatory coffee and sticky, we drove back to the motel then set off to walk into the city. It’s about 2kms into the centre from here. First stop was the Cathedral. It has some superb windows
and some mosaics on the walls which just look like paintings until you get a little closer. The organist was practising and also the choir could be heard in one of the back rooms, so that added to the atmosphere. Outside, in the Cathedral square, there were craft stalls and a piper playing. He was only a young lad and played beautifully. As we can’t get net access here, we went to an internet shop and sent an e-mail to my brother, congratulating him on his forthcoming nuptials – oh how I wish we could be there, but we’ll celebrate once we get together in the summer.We walked on over the river Avon up to the Art Centre where there is a huge array of craft shops – just about any form of craft you can imagine is there and all of an extremely high standard. There had been lots of stalls in the square at the front of the Centre, but unfortunately, by the time we got there, they were closing up.
Just beyond the Centre are the Botanic gardens – Wellington, eat your heart out!
The gardens are beautiful, the formal beds are all itemised on a board so if you see something you like and don’t know what it is, you can look at the index and find it. One of the herbaceous borders was first planted in the 1800’s and they have retained the planting layout as near to the original as possible. Many of the trees are really old and huge, all named, and although the ground is showing signs of the drought conditions that are prevailing at the moment, the overall effect is still inspiring. We didn’t have the energy to walk all the gardens, but on our way out via the rose garden, we met a man with the most colourful bird we’ve ever seen. It was a Rainbow Lorrakeet? from Australia. The colours were so bright they looked unreal and it was so tame, just sitting on his hand or shoulder, making no attempt to escape.So, invigorated by something so pretty, we trekked our way home deciding that we’d eat in again tonight as we have to be up early for our TranzAlpine adventure tomorrow. We’re having a couple of glasses of wine as I write this then it’ll be goodnight all.
Tom’s addition. Oh how sad. Poor Argentina have just been stuffed by England in the NZI Rugby Sevens. Ok, so we were rubbish yesterday, but today we’ve just won the silver bowl, and, did I mention, that in the final we stuffed the Argentinians?
Good game, good wine, goodnight.
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