Windy Wellington

We arrived in Wellington early afternoon on Sunday, and rushed to the seaside markets for some excellent food cart treats.  We walked to the TSB Arena, where the World of Wearable Art (WOW) show is held for two weeks each year.  WOW is a whimsical combination of clothing and visual art.  Unfortunately, the tickets are sold far in advance, so we didn’t get to see any of the shows in Wellington – maybe on another trip.  See http://worldofwearableart.com for some examples of what the WOW designers create.

On Monday morning we hiked to the top of Mt. Victoria with some other folks who were also staying at the YHA hostel in Wellington.  Our new friends from the US, Canada, Chile, France and Malaysia enjoyed 360 degree views of the Wellington area.  Wellington is known as the Windy City in New Zealand, and we felt like we were going to be blown off the top of the mountain.

That afternoon we took the Wellington cable car up the hill to the Botanic Gardens, and walked back down to the city through this beautiful public space.  We also stopped at Old St. Paul, a historic wooden church that has been preserved as a museum. 

On Tuesday we spent the morning at Te Papa, the free national museum, looking at exhibits ranging from the history of WOW to a movie showing New Zealanders talking about the places they feel are important in New Zealand.  There were many more exhibits we didn’t get to, as we had to head out of town to catch the ferry to the south island.  We’ll be back another time to this huge and well-constructed museum.