The trip to the Ferry terminal was pretty straightforward. We know where we need to be and have our seating figured out for our ferry ride to the South Island. We jumped into a taxi and headed to the cable car terminal. Our snapper cards worked for the trip and so we did not need to stand in line. It was a short trip, 5 minutes, but we gained 390 feet in altitude which we were happy to sit down for. There was a museum dedicated to this cable car system, from the design in 1899, to the build in 1902, to the upgrades in 1965 and 1979 to the present. The original cars were actually cable cars like those in San Francisco. A cable ran under the cars and each car had a gripper. The gripper would grab the moving cable and the car would then get pulled by the cable. The current system is a funicular system with electric drives in the cars, The big improvement was automating the cars with regard to starting and stopping. After a nice stay up top we headed back down to go to the Wellington Museum. It was a quirky museum with odd exhibits ranging from a taxidermy lion to a series of carved wooden heads of early civic leaders. Then it was back to the house to get ready for our fancy dinner at the Field and Green restaurant.
We had a bit of a problem getting here
Cruise boats in port
We are at the cable car terminus
Super colorful art
At the lower terminus
Flashing lights in the tunnels
Midway the track spints into tow so the uphill car can pass the downhill car
Headng up
Nice neighborhoods
Top of the world!
Back to the Botanical Gardens
The conductor needs a trim
Bridges, tunnels and tracks, oh my!
A classic deco building
Public art
The Wellington Fine Arts Academy
The Wellington Museum is in this building
The clock was removed from the clock tower for safety reasons. An active seismic zone can't have big clocks stuck on the side of tall buildings
Let the funky displays begin, this is a model of an early photographer's wagon
An Artist's case
A master carver at his finest
This is a display of wooden stakes that vampire fearing people had in the 1800's
These carvings had very specific characters from mythology
Here is the map and the meanings of the carvings of the gates
I bought all of them to give to my sweetie
The largest eagle to survive into modern times was the Haast Eagle that could weigh 33 pounds. It did not survive the Māori neither did the Moa its main food source.
A firefighter helmet
The Māori canoe masthead
This Cutty Sark was made of wooden matchsticks
Any we wonder why there are no longer silhouette portraitists
The rug on the floor was a map of the city
A tale to two cultures painter in a corner. To the right the masthead on western ships was usually a female and on the left the masthead on a Māori canoe was usually male
An animated rat in the museum
The logo of the local butter company
A giant braille sculpture
Still the old school buildings interspersed with the new
Lima beans or soy beans?
A Man and His Dog. His dog is named Fritz!
The new architecture
The posts to stop vehicles are in the shape of the silver tree fern
It has been 228 days since we began our Migration
