The one thing that has to be said about Wellington is that it's hard to believe it's a capital city. In fact, it takes a bit of convincing to believe it's a city at all - big town perhaps. It's not just it's size - whilst it's not exactly big, it's not particularly small, and at least it has a fe skyscrapers and important-looking offices in the CBD to make it feel a bit moe city-ish - it's the fact that for the weekend we were there, the one question on my lips was "where is everybody?!?!"

We arrived via a spectacular drive through a national park between Coromandel and Napier - so beautiful, with an enormous, deep blue, breathtaking lake in the middle of it - and an overnight stop in Napier. The art deco is all very admirable but I have to say none of us were particularly taken with Napier. We arrived in Wellington late on a Friday night and headed out to eat - parts of the streets we walked along where busy with a weekend crowd, but some - and this is in the middle of NZ's capital - where deserted. Ironically, there were probably more people around when we left the restaurant to open heavens and driving rain! The next day, we walked along the front (and it was pretty cold!) and took in Te Papa museum, the national museum of NZ. This was fabulous - a HUGE museum, surprisingly un-busy, with great big exhibition spaces full of exhibits on anything you can think of. The was a particularly good section on the Maori culture and interaction with NZ today, and how the spirit is kept alive through traditions that are subsumed into the life, not only of the Maoris, but of Kiwis generally.

After that we took the cable car up to the Botanic Gardens, which was good fun, and walked down through the gardens back to the city. The various parts of the gardens and the beautiful cemetery in the lower reaches are something of an oasis in the city, and it's a bit of a shock to come out and hit a main road and the completely charmless government buildings. I think we saw Wellington's best bits there. And then we walked back to the hotel, late afternoon on a summertime Saturday - and the streets were EMPTY, everything was shut, it was so bizarre! We had a quiet night (pizza in front of the TV!) and left on Sunday morning - and don't get me started on how quiet Wellington is then! - to sail over to South Island, bidding a sad farewell to Betty (our Ford - get it?!), and all our North Island adventures.