Thursday 9th March

We arrived in Wellington this morning at about 8am & after breakfast waited to be bussed into the city as work is ongoing, on the wharf, to repair last year's earthquake. Luckily it was warmer than yesterday but we were still glad of our puff jackets.

We caught up with our electronic chores & waited for Rosie, Jane’s former primary school friend, who lives about 50km north of the city.

Rosie took us for a walk around, starting with a visit to the local Academy of Art Exhibition which was very pleasant. From there we visited the Custom House Museum, on the waterfront next door before walking over to a hotel for an excellent lunch at the Hippopotamus restaurant overlooking the bay.

We strolled over to the Wellington Museum, a modern & very well designed building with great displays including a preserved 'Colossal Squid’, the largest ever taken, about 500kg & 2.5m in length. It also has a fine garden display of local flora.

From there we meandered back along the waterfront eventually to the shuttle pick up point outside a building which had its fire alarms going & was being evacuated. Rosie was farewelled & the bus took us back to the ship, passing a wharf warehouse with big cracks which had risen on the land side about 300cm from the surrounding asphalt of the road, presumably during the earthquake. Otherwise we didn’t see any evidence of damage although we were told that there are still some claims of damage from the earthquake of about 5 years ago which still have not been settled.

By the time we had returned the weather had improved considerably, the clouds had cleared & we were seeing blue sky.

We left Wellington in very benign conditions & after dinner went to see a show by Craig Halliday, a violinist playing an acoustically amplified instrument to great effect. His style was a cross between Stafan Grappelli & Andre Rieu & he played a range of mainly pop songs & film sound tracks to wild applause from the geriatric audience of retired rockers.