Tuesday was our first full day in New Zealand.

Monday, we arrived at M and C’s a little after ten. We spent the rest of the day trying to stay awake by exploring the village of Hataitai near M and C’s house in Wellington. The village is quite small and has a nice collection of shops, cafes and restaurants. A chocolate shop full of handcrafted, sugared, delights kept G happy. The evening was spent chilling with C and M – a good end to a long day.

On Tuesday we found we’d acclimatised quite quickly to the time zone and so decided to head into the centre of Wellington. We caught a bus that was both on time, clean and allowed us to sit down. Already I could tell Wellington was going to be a clear improvement on old London town.

The bus journey passed through a series of suburbs lined by wooden houses, painted in a range of pastels and reminded me in places of Georgetown, Washington only cleaner. Indeed there is a strong mix of British, American and European architecture all over the city with downtown Wellington resembling parts of America now lost in time – or that perhaps never really existed save in old television shows.

The weather had been initially cloudy, a continuation of weather we encountered on landing in Wellington, but by the time we got into town it was really quite sunny. Warm enough in the sun that I removed my jacket as we walked up past the Beehive (part of the New Zealand parliamentary buildings) to where we had arranged to meet C for lunch.

Lunch was a joy. We went to a medium sized café called The Ministry of Food where we tucked into some really great focaccia with grilled field mushrooms and goat’s feta; it was fabulous. To be honest I’ve been really surprised at the quality of the food. Everywhere we’ve been so far – admittedly not that much – they’ve cooked the food fresh on the premises. It’s been a lovely surprise.

After lunch, we decided to explore the botanical gardens. The walk up takes you past the beehive through Bolton Memorial Cemetery where many of the Victorian settlers are buried. A motorway was run through it in the sixties splitting the site in two; they’re now part of a walk that leads from town up to the botanical gardens and linked via a bridge over the road. It was surprising, once we were over the footbridge, how quickly the sound of the motorway gave way to the serenity of the cemetery and birdsong from the thriving wildlife.

On emerging from the cemetery we entered a rose garden and despite it being nearly autumn we managed to see some fantastic flowers as well as some boisterous ducks. It was very clear a great deal of love and effort had gone into those gardens. I must confess it was an incredibly relaxing space that I just sat in whilst G took many, many photographs. I wasn’t surprised to hear water because there was a fountain but I was surprised to see a small waterfall surrounded by some type of memorial.

This was the Peace Flame celebrating New Zealand’s strong commitment to conflict resolution, specifically touching on New Zealand’s anti-nuclear stance. New Zealand has strong links to Japan in part because of its stance on Nuclear weapons; New Zealand is a nuclear free country and has been for some time. The flame is a Hiroshima and Nagasaki Peace flame that sits in a lantern in the centre of the water feature. Also present is an actual stone taken from the ruins of Hiroshima. The monument was an unexpected find in amongst the gardens and I spent some time reflecting on it. I’m still not sure how I feel.

I’ll post some photos when I get a chance.

At the top of botanical gardens the fantastic range of trees give way to breathtaking views down over the city and harbour. Having exhausted ourselves scrambling around for good shots and the light deciding to fail we caught the cable car back down to the city. This wasn’t dissimilar to the Victoria cable car in Hong Kong.

From there it was back to the house for another evening with friends.