Wellington is the capital of New Zealand, and is much larger that our last two cities, we visited. We saw the new Supreme Court building. NZ didn’t have its own Supreme Court until 1999 when they took it over from England. The beehive building, an oddly shaped building, is used for the executive wing of Parliament. Th Lonely Planet said it’s one of the ugliest buildings in the world.

The city reminded me of San Francisco because of the steep hills. The houses located on the top of some of the cliffs overlooking the water didn’t have streets up to their home. They would park on the street below and walk up the steps to the house. Or if lucky, they might install a cable car either a high tech or low tech one to bring them up.

We drove to the top of Mount Victoria Lookout. It’s not far from the business district and from the top you have a panoramic view of Wellington. After this, we went to the cable car museum. Cable cars have been operated here since 1902. Our last stop was Lady Norwoods rose garden.

Earthquakes and Recovery

• The most interesting part of Wellington was how it grew, changed and blossomed after the earthquakes. Our driver mentioned that there are 3000 quakes a year recorded. Some small, but the one from 183q did a lot of damage changing the area permanently.
• Where the airport sits today used to be a channel. But after an earthquake rose the land up 8 meters, it created one area of flat land.

Lord of the Rings

If you’re a fan of the Lord of the Rings, you know it was filmed in New Zealand. Peter Jackson, lives in the Wellington area (Miramar Peninsula). The premier of the movie occurred here, and a Gollum statue is in the airport. Ruth went on a tour today to view breadth taking real life sites from the movie series. Some of the highlights included:

• Excellent guide, who obviously loved working there
• Weta factory was interesting and but Ruth said you couldn’t take photos
• Forest which was up Mt. Victoria was used for filming various scenes. The guide shared a story of when Sam auditioned for the role, got it, and then worked out to be in shape. But when he arrived on set, they were disappointed in his weight loss, so the only thing he ate was Kentucky fried chicken and donuts. Hobbits has to run up and down the hill so much they had to take him to the hospital
• When making the movie Peter Jackson felt bad about the people he disturbed he bought all of them high speed internet

I cannot complete this blog without mentioning my friend Paul McConnell. I learned this morning that he passed away today. It was hard to enjoy the day after learning this shocking news. Paul was very private about personal things, so it was not surprising that many of us didn’t know about his aggressive intestinal cancer. Paul loved life, traveled often and big, and made everyone around him laugh. He could be a real ass, but so many of us loved him dearly. Tonight, I will toast to Paul.

Tomorrow we head to Christchurch.