January 4

Today was our last full day on the North Island (or as I say, the north-east island) so I was up at 0645. After a cup of tea and breakfast, it was the now usual procedure of shower, dress, pack up the luggage, pack the car, check the room and depart.
We were off by 0800 and travelled through Hastings. This was a very nice little town, flowerful because of flower baskets through nearly every street hanging off verandahs and poles. There was a most interesting accident as we headed out – on a very wise and very short street, a car had T-boned a traffic light pole in a traffic island. No other vehicles, no marks on the road and the occupants didn’t seem too worried.
We headed south, then west and over through the mountains to Palmerston North. Here I looked to see if I could find my travelling companion from the Egypt tour, but I didn’t have enough information with me to identify him from the many of similar name in the local telephone book. We had a little look around and found it had grown considerably since I was last there. It was a clean and attractive city and well worth a longer look – but we had no time.
After a relatively short drive to Wellington, we found and checked into our hotel at 1300 but were too early to get a room. I parked the car in their basement car park ($15! – but I wasn’t going to get caught again) and then we walked around the city area and a little of the port area.
We were back at the hotel at 1400 – and the saga started for us again (beware city hotels!). The first room was a double, and had same key as another room (which may have been embarrassing as I just opened the door with the key and walked in (but as soon as I saw luggage I slowed down). We eventually got a twin room, but there was no kettle. After ringing the desk and telling them, the head housekeeper arrived to show us where it was (but it wasn’t) – eventually a kettle arrived.
We did have a casualty, as the last handle on Fran’s suitcase broke off. Now it had to be manhandled everywhere, but could be walked as the walking handle was still there (just).
We went out for a walk and ended up down at the Te Museum and had a look over the museum. It really was very good and even the giant squid was on show (calamari – you could live your life on what was there).
We walked along most of the waterfront and continued up to Parliament House (Beehive). Then we walked back towards the city until we reached the Cable Car terminus (not easy to find) and took that up to the Botanic Gardens.
Unfortunately we arrived after 1700 and the planetarium and most other things were closed, so we walked around and then took the cable car back to town. After a long, but level walk, we arrived at Burger King to have our evening meal. A short walk saw us back at the hotel and, after gathering up all the other things from the car and removing rubbish, we went back to the room and prepared things for tomorrow – which was our ferry crossing to the south-east island and a change of car.
I processed today’s photos, wrote up a summary of today’s blog and prepared for bed. The Internet was too expensive (and limited), so not used and very soon it was to bed and to sleep.