Wellington

We continued our holiday journey, driving from Rotorua to Wellington at the south tip of the North Island. Petrol stations seem to be more sparsely distributed in New Zealand than in the US, so the fuel gauge needle was uncomfortably close to the red E at the end of the dial. I was also doing mental math to convert kilometres and litres to miles and gallons to predict the amount of distance we could travel before we would run out of fuel and call for roadside assistance. We finally came to a station and Megan breathed a sigh of relief. I never had any doubt.

The price of petrol does not vary by more than a few cents per litre at all of the petrol stations. There must be some kind of national collusion because competition among different brands does not seem to make a difference: about nine out of ten petrol stations sold regular gas for 141.9 cents per litre (that converts to $3.65 US per gallon).

We stopped for dinner at a restaurant along the southwest coast and had a fine meal of fish and chips. The restaurant faced the ocean surf which was stirred up in a frothy tempest resulting from a storm that had blown in that afternoon. Wellington is famous for its wind, rivaling Chicago for the frequency and intensity of windy days.

We found our hotel after a couple of circuits through the CBD. The Wellesley Club is a very ornate hotel with old fashioned decor, appointments, and high coffered ceilings. We were given the McVicar Suite which was just adjacent to the Davidson Suite, What were they thinking? Fancy hotel bathrobes were supplied, but we ignored the fancy embellishments and wet bar offerings. Who do they expect to eat one small serving of Pringles potato chips for 3 dollars? Not us!

We ate the complimentary continental breakfast in the hotel dining room, but I insisted that we stop for a flat white at a local coffee shop before we headed to the Parliament buildings.

We walked around the Beehive (that's what the new Parliament building is affectionately called) and the old Parliament Buildings and arrived at the entry just in time for a guided tour. Our tour guide spoke with an American accent but he seemed very knowledgeable about the New Zealand history and government. We toured the House Chamber and saw the Queen's throne (it's really just a red upholstered high back chair!). The Queen is still officially the Head of State but it's obviously a ceremonial vestige of another time period.
The old Parliament building had recently been upgraded for earthquake safety. We saw a short video about it and saw the actual contraptions in the basement. They're called flexible base isolators and they were my favourite part of the whole tour, The base isolation system was developed in New Zealand by a Kiwi structural engineer and they are quite proud of the technology that has been exported around the world.

After the tour, we walked across town toward the Te Papa Museum, and Megan gave me a welcome civics lesson in parliamentary government and proportional representation. I need to learn more but it was a good start. The Labour (liberal) party controls Government now (barely) and the National (conservative) party is the Opposition. There are half a dozen minor parties like the Green, Maori, and New Zealand First party, but they only have a few seats. Coalitions and alliances are formed to ensure a majority voting block and this makes for some interesting bed partners. There's a fair amount of stealth, betrayals, and back stabbing. It's Shakespearian.

The Te Papa Museum is a new building lacking architectural distinction. It doesn't seem to have any memorable form or texture from the outside, and the galleries are chopped into odd spaces with no apparent flow or order. It's not even a sculptural edifice like the Guggenheim in Bilbao which works inside and out on so many levels. The permanent collection of paintings is small (most of it is science and history-related children's exhibits, which Megan liked) and the temporary art exhibits were average. The best part was a room with a vaulting stained glass window refracting a filtered blue light on a multi-coloured, whimsical marae within.










We walked back toward the hotel, stopping to see St. Paul's Old Church (1886) which has a very attractive timber vaulted gothic roof structure. A US Marine Corps flag was inexplicably mounted in the nave prominently alongside the New Zealand and American flags. Why?








Two buildings away, we visited the National Archives and were the only visitors to walk through the exhibits which included a display under glass of the original Treaty of Waitangi (similar to the Declaration of Independence) and other original founding documents in an unguarded, dimly lit vault. There was also an exhibit about an airplane crash in Antarctica 25 years ago, killing 250 sightseers. We had no idea there were flights to Antarctica! Apparently people used to fly there and back (without landing) just to see it from the air.


A brief walk back to the hotel and another walk to an Indian restaurant with take-away curried lamb finished us off for the evening. Megan soaked her sore feet in the luxurious hotel bath after a long and tiring but very interesting day.