Wellington to New Plymouth

 Wellington to New Plymouth

Our ferry from Picton on the South Island was delayed arriving and so late docking in Wellington that some of the restaurants had already closed.

I  had some time in the capital, Wellington the next morning so I took a swift tour of the city starting with the railway station opposite the harbour.

The cavernous interior.

A commuter train waiting at the platform.

Just up the street from the waterfront is the Parliament Building, the seat of government, known locally as the Beehive.

One of many old buildings along the waterfront, well preserved and mostly re-purposed.

A detail of the outside.

Another historic building, now a museum.

Another old building undergoing seismic strengthening to resist damage from potentially strong earthquakes that can occur almost all over the country.

                                        

An old dock side crane.

The Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa is New Zealand's National Museum usually known as Te Papa, it opened in 1998 after the merging of the National Museum of New Zealand and the National Art. It has several fascinating collections, special temporary exhibitions, fauna and flora, New Zealand's unique wildlife, volcanoes and plate tectonics, and the one that I was most interested in having visited the battlefields on the 100th anniversary, the ANZACs experience of the Gallipoli Campaign.

                                        

There are plenty of other interesting buildings along the waterfront, such as the theatre...

...and the Harbour Board Offices to show just a few. 

The road out of Wellington was not spectacular but functional, getting you from A to B but interesting in its own way.

As we approached New Plymouth. we caught sight of Taranaki, the mountain that had featured in an earlier Maori tale. The summit is the grey pimple just left off of centre and its not a good photo but in reality, it was much better and a reminder of the love and creation story that we had heard earlier along the road.