Richard Pearse Hotel Wellington

... socially too, which is good. Throughout the week we do Salsa Tues, Leszek has floorball Wed whilst I swim & I have running with the ladies Thu night. Other nights are kept busy planning, sleeping or catching up with Isabel. We have some Christmas party invites too, which we're looking forward to attending. We both miss our UK social lives & friends/family, so need to keep busy.

Leszek is patiently awaiting for the visa application to ...

... about and I think the others are also. We have our first day of work today at the convention center at 5.

The day is pretty overcast and misty here so we are spending some down time inside after running around the city yesterday with a girl from Wellington. She showed us around Lambton Quay, the business district (which also had some awesome shopping), and then we walked back to Courtney and Cuba via the boardwalk that seems to go ...

... tide you can dig your own spa pool in the sand. The water is scaldingly hot - 60 degrees celsius, as it is heated by molten lava deep below the beach. It was quite a surreal site seeing a hundred or so people all digging big holes and then all getting into them, jacuzzi style. Needless to say the kids loved it.

From there we headed up to some of the most beautiful beaches I've ever seen. They were totally deserted and reminded us of the Isles of Scilly ...

... in the hills that week and had gone missing in a snowstorm. Both he and his walking partner´s bodies were eventually found about 300m from the hut they were heading for. Very sad, though it was interesting as it was national headline news for days. I suspect that if the CEO of the National Museum at home had met the same fate it would have been a 5 minute snippet on the 6 o´clock news - perhaps this showed just how small New Zealand really is ...

Originally scheduled for just a quick stopover, it turned out to be a spot that deserved more than just one night.  Self-proclaimed as the most cosmopolitan city in New Zealand, it took a bit of a walk to find Cuba Street, the centre of the city life.  The city proper was surprisingly dark at night...the large buildings jumped out from nowhere.  Cuba Street is a proper city square...imagine San Francisco's North Beach, Chinatown, Mission District, Haight/Ashbury ...

... typically have no central heating. So we use electric heaters to keep the living room warm. We got a car as well. It is an old Mini Clubman from 1981. I love whizzing around Welly in it. Although, I don't get to drive it all that often as it is mainly used by Angie to go to work. I am still cycling in from Kelburn but some times I walk to the cable car and I am down at work in 5 mins. Our next goal now is the Wellington half-marathon on 28th of June. I hate running ...

... us some of the birds we might see in the wild. Then we walked back to the house of Minnie and Amo, a daughter and mother of the Maori family who has been here for many years. We had cookies and tea and then did another walk. Here are some of the birds we saw: * Takahe, which is the rarest. There are only 200 left in the World and only 14 on Kapiti Island. We saw at least three today, up close. They have bright orange beaks, blue and green ...

... from the UK, one from Holland and one from Germany (the last two spoke English as good as the English) so we also had an entertaining conversation on where to go and what to see. On recommendation we stopped off at Shag Point to see more sea lions and penguins (still no penguins but the hundreds of sea lions were at a safe distance this time) and then at the Mouraki Boulders which was a bit further along the coast. These are huge perfectly round ...

... by the Intelligence Historian Nigel West, this time entitled 'Sexspionage - Honeytraps, Coercion and Blackmail during the Cold War', if we had thought the theatre was full for his previous lectures this time it was full to overflowing - I imagine it has something to do with the title. There was then time for me to have a quick hour in the gym before heading down to the dining room for Sunday Brunch - it ...

... proud of – the workings of a Select Committee Room allowing direct representation inside Parliament House for members of the public on issues of Maori Affairs being one, and the fact that in 1893 NZ was the first country in the world where women were allowed to vote. I was hoping to have a chat to the country’s second female Prime Minister, Helen Clark, about these issues when the tour briefly stopped in the Executive ...