Wellington NZ

Australia 10-31 and 11-1-2012

I am a day behind in my blogs so I will try to inform aboutour last two days in one post.  As usualI am not able to upload photos because the satellite connection is too slow andI have limited minutes to work with. Yesterday we spent the day in Wellington which is the capital of NewZealand.  We began our bus tour going upMt. Victoria which gave us a beautiful overlook of the area.  The driver also pointed out several areas onthe mountain which were used in the Lord of the Rings movie.  He also informed us about some of the soundeffects used ie the marching in the movie of the armies was done by the walkingback and forth at the soccer stadium.  Atintermission during one game the audience was asked to march back and forth attheir seats.  We also went up a cable carto the top of a mountain and then to the botanical gardens.  Only glitch in that was that two people wenton our bus and the driver had the correct count and drove off leaving us at thetop of the mountain to be picked up later. We then went off to a church which was built obviously by a shipbuilder.  The roof looked like the bottomof a ship on the inside.  Veryinteresting.  We were then dropped offdowntown where Bob and I searched for internet. We finally found it at a bar on the wharf.  We paid 25.00 for two drinks to have theprivilege of using their wifi.  I wasable to contact Ingrid, Melisa and Gloria. Napier is a very nice little resortcommunity with beautiful black beaches and art deco buildings.  We wandered down to the National aquarium ofNZ which was small but fulfilled our need to be underwater for a shortwhile.  They had a tube which had fishswimming all around us including shark and rays.  They also had smaller tanks with turtles, seahorses and Hawksbill turtle.  A shortwalk back into town and then some attempts to get on the computer.  We listened to three bagpipers in the towncenter and then boarded the bus to head back to the ship.  Once we arrived  at the ship there was an old time bandplaying and some antique cars in the port. We watched the ship leave port with tugs pushing and pulling to get itout of the harbor.  We wet out then toget on the gym equip and get online to talk to the kids.  We were able to get Ingrid and Liesl buteveryone else must have been asleep.