Wellington for Easter 🐣

We had a long Easter weekend-the girls had Easter Friday, Monday and Tuesday (betcha didn't know there was an Easter Tuesday, huh? Me, neither) off, so we took the ferry across to the North Island from Picton (about 3 hours drive from Westport) to Wellington. We had been getting emails from the ferry about bad weather that weekend...the Cook Strait can get hairy!

The very organized ferry onboarding process. It looks so gorgeous out! How can there be bad weather??

Leaving Picton.

So many sailboats. And so many jellyfish in the water!

Leaving the protection of the Sounds and to the open water! I didn't see any whales, sadly (apparently they do sometimes!) but Josh saw dolphins and we saw lots of albatross-they are so fun to watch soaring over the waves. Turns out they can fly for hours without ever beating their wings. They fly in wide arcs, swooping downwind toward the water, then catching the updrafts off the waves and gliding upward (dynamic soaring). On the ferry back, it was very calm, and I only saw one albatross-we were spoiled on the way over. The benefits of wind and a rough sea! (though they did shoo everyone off the top deck for 'safety reasons' so I couldn't watch the birds as well after that.)

Te Papa (NZ's national museum) is the coolest ever. Lots of hands on for the kids, and so much to see!

Replica of a whale heart-true to size!

Wandering by the waterfront.

Can you spot them all?

Frank asked for this picture. I appreciate her aesthetic.

We went for lunch then back to the museum! This exhibit was about NZ's participation of the Gallipoli campaign of WWI-

'Gallipoli: The Scale of Our War combines the world of museums with the world-class creative artistry of Weta Workshop to immerse you in the eight-month Gallipoli campaign.

The ground-breaking exhibition tells the story through the eyes and words of eight ordinary New Zealanders who found themselves in extraordinary circumstances. Each is captured frozen in a moment of time on a monumental scale – 2.4 times human size.

The giant sculptures took a staggering 24,000 hours to create, and countless hours were spent researching their rich histories.'

Easter service at a super cute church. After mass they gave out chocolate covered Easter eggs- the girls were VERY impressed.

Wellington harbor

Harborside Market! So many things to see, and eat, and smell, and look at!

Yum!

Gorgeous produce!

More great playgrounds.

Look at these cute kids!

Artsy Wellington! Frank fits in the sculptures quite well, don't you think?

And lots of fun murals.

Shark!

Windy Wellington!

Haven't seen one of these for a while...

Botanical gardens were gorgeous!

Playground within the gardens-I think we could have left the girls here for hours.

Views from the top.

Cable car!

And cable car museum!

Frank with a giant tree.

Avocado toast for Easter dinner, anyone?

Our AirBnB was an old farmhouse that they actually moved from a town a few hours north to Wellington. They split the house into 5 pieces and brought it up a super windy road next to a quarry to it's current space overlooking Wellington and the harbor-such a cool spot.

They had chickens and alpacas! Nobody would eat the carrots that I was attempting to lure them with.

The chickens were pretty friendly. The alpacas were more leery of us.

More great playgrounds!

Van's face is so perfect!

They look happy here, but let me tell you, this deteriorated QUICKLY.

A fellow treetop family was also taking a sabbatical in New Zealand-so we met up with the Zacs and all went to a fantastic nature preserve right in town called Zealandia. They had face painting!

Takahe! Another flightless NZ bird, these guys are endangered. They were thought to be extinct but then rediscovered in the south island in the 1940s.

Exploring.

Checking the weta boxes with Jamie.

Violet taking a break.

Violet taking another break.

Wait a minute, that's a tiger, not a violet!

Kea-an endangered parrot species that apparently like to remove weather striping of cars!

*no, I am a liar! the forest parrot, like this guy, is a kaka, but the alpine parrot is a kea. they are both intelligent and cheeky, we have been told.

Tui. Also the name of a great NZ brewery.

Kiwi butt. For reals! During the daylight!

More murals, this time matching Frank's face paint.

Wandering down Cuba street.

We need to work on the Abbey Road training.

More rainbows!

And the ferry home!

The girls were happy to watch TV for the entire 3.5 hour ferry ride. I needed to be outside!

Wellington already makes me think of Duluth-hilly, windy, port city....and then there's this guy! So basically I'm in Minnesota. Except with dolphins.