There are no sea days for a while now - we have four stops to make in New Zealand in all and the fifth day we are sailing through the fjords - I guess technically that day could be classed as a sea day but we will be wanting to be up on deck watching as we go through them.
Today we were visiting Wellington. We didn’t have a tour until the afternoon and so we allowed ourselves to sleep in and sleep in we did. We didn’t sleep in as long as we would have liked to, though. When we were close to docking, the captain came on the loud speaker and let us know we had arrived in Wellington. We slowly got our act together and it was about 11am when we finally made it to breakfast, although I guess by that time it was more like brunch. :-) Since it was that late, we didn’t get to go to the dining room as it closes at 9:30am, so we headed up to Deck 14 and ate at the buffet in Horizon Court.
When we were on Deck 6 checking out some things, we found that the gangway was set up there and the air coming through it was really cold. Brrr. It was a reminder of how happy we are that we are not going to have to live in that cold again. :-) Just before we left the ship to get ready for our tour, I decided that I wanted to be warmed up with some yummy soup and so we headed up to the dining room to get some. I have had a number of soups onboard and every single one of them has been totally delicious. I would love to have the recipe from the chefs. :-)
When we got down to the dock, we found ourselves in a waiting room as it was too cold and windy to go outside. Once our tour number was called we went out to the buses and got on. Our tour driver, Jim, was waiting there to greet us. He drove us all over Wellington telling us about the history of the city and also about many buildings in the city. We stopped at a few sights to take some pictures. We stopped on top of Mt. Victoria and got an amazing view of the city of Wellington. It’s a beautiful city, but it’s sooooo windy! Jim told us that the nickname of the city is Windy Wellington and it showed us today exactly why. We were glad that we had brought our windbreakers.
When we got back from the tour, we had to go straight to our cabin (after a quick stop by the ice-cream stand :-) to get ready to go to dinner. We needed to go early today as our church meeting was at 7pm today. Supper was as delicious as always. I had chicken (we haven’t had much of chicken during our cruise and so it was so nice to have it for a change) and Mike had the ‘surf and turf’.
We actually had to speed up dinner a bit as the time was going by fast and we didn’t want to be late for church. I actually left the table still chewing my dessert. :-) Church was really nice - it’s been so good to be able to have this opportunity while onboard. Before we left we had decided we would do our own thing on Sunday as we didn’t know that there would be church services on board for us. There were 16 people at the meeting and two of them (who we had not met before) were a young couple from Utah who were emigrating to New Zealand. We had heard about them from other people we had dined with, and it was interesting to meet them and learn that they were members of the church. The two speakers today did a great - a woman spoke about how the Holy Ghost will help us during our trials and a man spoke about how spiritual gifts are still given out today. He talked about how the Maori people really took to the gospel when missionaries came to New Zealand.
After church, we went to the Princess Theatre to listen to a singer who had been touted as a winner of the Australian Entertainers Award and New Zealand’s top performer, Ash Puriri. Although he was a good singer, I can’t imagine why he was given those awards. There were a number of people who walked out on his performance, but I didn’t have the nerve. He was also said to be an impersonator - he sang like other performers such as Tom Jones, Louis Armstrong and Luciano Pavarotti. I thought he did a pretty good job of doing those, but he still wasn’t that interesting a performer to me.
Wet and windy Wellington, New Zealand.
Wellington
Wellington from a view point.
New and old architecture in Wellington.
Old St. Pauls' parish church, Wellington.
Inside Old St. Paul's parish church, Wellington.
The old and the new City Hall, Wellington.
Architecture in Wellington.
Wellington cable car.
View from Wellington cable car.
Houses on the hillside in Wellington.
Flower in the Lady Norwood Rose Garden, Wellington.
Ash Puriri
David - band leader and music director for the ship.
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