The next morning the sun was up and it wasn’t windy so Wellington was instantly more appealing, and you could actually say it was warm. We visited the Museum of New Zealand, Te Papa, which was huge and worthwhile. We spent all morning in the museum and then went to the Parliament, of course, since Hendrik was still not sick of Parliaments. First off the newest building of Parliament was so ugly it’s an eye sore. It’s a giant bee hive and it clashes with the other buildings around it which are nice. The security was also unbelievably strict very different from Canberra where everyone just freely walked around. I wasn’t too impressed with it and the tour was also boring.

The bee-hive

Then I wanted to go to the top of Mt. Victoria. I had asked the hostel receptionist how to get there and she said you just walk. No one wanted to go on a hike besides Simon so we went together. The climb was incredibly steep, so when we reached the top I was worn out and really disappointed when I saw a huge parking lot and even a city bus up top. I felt really gypped. The view was nice and we realized how spread out Wellington was. The airport was particularly interesting to me since the whole runway was visible and it had water on both ends and landing planes were clearly visible. Since we were done with Wellington we moved our ferry to the earlier start which was 8:00 AM so we had to get up early.

Wellington from Mt. Vic

It was warm and sunny the next day which made us wish that it had been like this in the other region for the Tongariro Crossing. We walked around Napier and saw all the art deco buildings which were pretty. It was a very unique cute town and we just wanted to dress up in 1920s clothing.

We also visited the aquarium since they claimed to have live kiwis and I wanted to see a live kiwi before leaving New Zealand. It was a small aquarium but it had some nice displays especially the seahorses. They also had an underwater walkway where fish swim all around and even above you and through this are there was a travelator. Even though the section wasn’t well maintained I thought the travelator was awesome.

A Kiwi

Then we decided to go on a small wine yard tour but only made it to one winery, the Mission Estate. It was beautiful and the wine was nice too, but I only tried one since I was the DD.

Then we went to lunch where we had the great debate of what to do next. We had several options which were drive to Wellington and stay on schedule, or drive back towards Taupo and do the Tongariro Crossing and postpone the ferry. The forecast was a bit bette—that it would rain in the morning and possibly clear up in the afternoon. We debated about buying ponchos and waterproof pants since we would have to start the hike in the morning. We were still skeptical so it was brought up that we could still decide in the morning whether to do the hike or not, to which I said no since it’s a 4+ hour drive back, and therefore, if we went back we would do it, at least I would do it. So unfortunately we decided to skip Tongariro. At least we know what we’ll do if we ever come back to New Zealand.

Mission Estate Winery

We drove to Wellington and stayed at the YHA. When we got out of the car we were totally blown away it was so incredibly windy and cold. We were told it would be windy but it was really incredible.