In addition to its merits as a relaxing city with the QC track, Picton is also the interisland ferry point to sail to Wellington. It's a perfect chance for a day trip to Wellington. A cruise through Marlborough Sound is the extra bonus. A 5:30 a.m. pre-sunrise departure on the Interisland Ferry was a brisk start to the day. Watching the sunrise while sailing out of the sound is one perfect view after another, but damn it was cold! The ferry ride is three hours, so there's a lot of time for pictures, napping, eating etc. We'd heard stories of rough crossings and braced for the open water section, but it was anticlamactic at best. I'd call it a gentle roll, and don't recall seeing a single person running for the restrooms. The ships have a movie theatre as well and serve food and the lounges always have a taped rugby game running with the Allblacks pummeling some other team.

We arrived in Wellington and set out for our 1-day adventure. Everbody always talks about how the weather in Wellington is cold & cloudy. I've hit the jackpot both times I've been there. I think Wellington had the nicest weather of the trip. Maybe its just a story to keep people away?? A quick walk down the waterfront landed us at Te papa. http://www.tepapa.govt.nz/pages/default.aspx 

Te papa has to be one of the coolest museums I've ever visited. It has all the NZ history you'd want to see and some very hip interactive exhibits about planet history, volcanoes and earthquakes. It is the most kid friendly museum I've ever seen.

We learned more about NZ in four hours than we ever could have from the guide books. So I say if you're coming here, day 1 should be in Wellington and spent at the museum! However, sometimes knowing all about a country does take away from the mystique. I've alway thought of NZ as this amazing untouched paradise. It is amazing. It is clean. It is possibly the most beautiful place I've ever been.  In a really big way though, it's a planned paradise. It seems that much of the fisheries and natural beauty are the product of introduced plants & species. I'm a little torn by this. On the one hand, I want to applaud the planners, but on the other, it sure would be cool to have seen it 200 years ago.  









The rest of the day filled up quickly with tracking down more closed restaurants (we did stumble on to a Vietnamese place that was amazing) and as we headed back to the waterfront,  we stumbled into the World Unicycle Championships. Huh???






We did see many of these on our walk from the ferry, but who knew there was a world championship?   From what we saw, it works like this. There are a variety of obstacles created and you have to negotiate them without falling off, and maybe there are even points for style. I don't know, read the website http://www.uniconxv.co.nz/ 










We stopped by a noted buildings as well, which is proof that not everything in NZ is beautiful, and even really ugly buildings can become tourist stops. Who, what, why did they build this thing???







We decided to "splurge" and upgrade our ferry seats for ride back. The pictures of the special upgrade lounge looked really cool and it promised food and free beer & wine. The "lounge" ended up being a room with little seats for 10 which had an espresso machine and some fruit & water. It was quiet, it had magazines and news papers. There was no free beer. There was no free wine. I gave it 10 minutes and asked for a refund. The cashier was shocked. She was nearly at a loss for words.  I guess nobody has ever asked for a refund before. She resisted. We had a lengthy discussion about no refunds and the pictures with the couches and free beer & wine that didn't exist and she saw my point. Apparently, the other ship had all that cool stuff. She gave me a refund after I promised to not go into the room. So while I took my refund and bought beer and took pictures of the sound near sunset, Laura stayed in the lounge and read magazines   The ferry ride back was another series of perfect views landing us back in Picton just as the sun set.