The locals love to say “you can’t beat Wellington on a good day” and from my experience in December 2019 that is clearly true.
Wellington is know for its wind, apparently it is not called the world’s windiest city for nothing, but for a few days in mid December 2019, the wind generally stayed away. You fly into the airport through what looks like a narrow valley, houses on both sides and I am told an experience when the wind is bad.
Melbourne now has a Singapore airline flight to take us there, an A350 so the product is great. Morning flight over and afternoon back, time to catch up on movies on the way there and back.
The city is on a waterfront, ships come frequently and during my visit The Ovations of the Sea with over 4500 passengers came to town , together with a smaller ship.
The QT is a good hotel to stay in, easy access to everything, lots of art work on the walls and all over the hotel.
There are lots of things to do, take the cable car and then walk down to the city through the Botanical gardens, climb to the top of Mt Victoria, it takes some effort, many bus it up and walk down.
Wellington, being the capital city of New Zealand, is the seat of their Parliament , comprising of 3 buildings, the oldest one housing the library. The “beehive” as it is known houses the offices of the government, and the building next door houses offices for the others and Parliament. Tours are interesting, the New Zealand voting system is very different from ours, 2 votes each, was told you vote for party and district, they have no upper house and this is designed ot attract coalition governments. Question time is much like what we see in Australia, rowdy.
The waterfront has lots of eating areas and it seems the people of Wellington flock to them. Christmas seemed to come early as there were lots of parties during the week, the sun was shining and people were enjoying the weather after what I had been told was weeks of wind.
This was written in December 2019 and posted in 2020- not sure when the SQ flight might resume but when we have our ” trans Tasman bubble” Wellington is worth a visit- maybe then go across to Picton, Abel Tasman national park and Marlborough for the wine – NZ is a great destination.
