Farewell to North Island

 Good morning readers, lots to write about following our very successful visit to the capital city of Wellington. Loved this cable car - sort of San Francisco meets the London Underground!! Note the cunning design (Swiss). We then headed to the Parliament Building to catch up with a couple of locals that we had met in Padstow last year - Greg and Barbara. We had lunch with them in The Beehive (oddly no photograph available from Fogg, might need to rectify that today!) - the Executive offices of the Parliament, designed back in the day by Basil Spence. Then we took a tour of the Parliament Buildings and learnt about how they were rebuilt 20 odd years ago with state of the art earthquake defences. Basically the building was literally separated from its basement, giant shock absorbers were put in and so the main building literally floats above the ground held up by some 400 plus of these. Famous the world over and copied extensively they have not yet been put to the big test, despite Wellington sitting on a number of fault lines.

 We are staying at the Intercontinenetal on the waterfront and despite not particularly brilliant weather we have experienced some wonderful moons!!(of the lunar variety)!!!!

 We have spent quite a long time - over a couple of visits at Te Papa (our place) the National Museum of NZ. It is an absolutely awesome place, Science Museum meets Natural History Museum meets V and A meets both Tates. So just about every aspect of NZ life, history, art etc included. So something for both of us and we have now experienced an earthquake simulation, learnt more about the tangled history of this place, marvelled at the beautiful Maori wood and greenstone carving and met the largest squid in the world. The shiny structures in the foreground of the Museum are one of many pieces of public art around the city - many quirky, others with a story to tell or a poem to recount.

The waterfront dominates the city and is a favourite area. This floating crane is called Hikitia, built in Scotland in 1926 she then sailed here to Wellington with the jib (crane) up. She was working up until quite recently and is now being restored to work again.

So we have been busy and also managed to celebrate Fogg's birthday in true Kiwi style with delicious seafood and a rather lovely local Chardonnay!! Today we are consolidating and re packing for our trip tomorrow across Cook Strait to Picton where we will meet up with Jude and Alan for a trip to their favourite bach in the Sounds. Only accessible by boat so we need to have everything we want before we leave and fishing will hopefully provide supper. The weather isn't looking too brilliant so not sure how long we will be there for!

I will now pass over to Fogg, best wishes to you all from the Windy city!!

Hi all

I have been keeping a close eye on what Phileas has been writing and really I have no more to add other than to say I had an excellent birthday and thank you all for your best wishes.

We are not sure what computer access we have when we first get to South Island so we may be out of communication for a while.

Very best wishes to you all.

Fogg x