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Congratulations to Barack! We've been intermittently watching the US presidential race today in a bar inbetween sightseeing. Earlier this afternoon we watched the early results roll in with a handful of Americans who were blogging throughout, and then we watched his victory address with a jam-packed bar of Yanks and Wellingtonians, people actually crowding around the windows in the street to get a view of the TV. I think it will definitely go down as a 'Where were you when...?' moment!
Anyway, we've seen quite a lot around Wellington today, initially with pretty bad hangovers. I was determined to see some of the city so I dragged a less than enthusiastic Jim with me to the Civic Square, Beehive and Parliament Buildings before relenting and letting him go watch the election. I continued exploring solo, hopping on the cable car up to the Botanic Gardens for some excellent views over the city.
This afternoon we both went to Te Papa, the national museum, and it's probably the best museum I've ever seen in my life. It's absolutely huge and is really varied in terms of exhibits including loads of art and interactive science stuff (we liked the earthquake room). It's the kind of place you wish you'd been taken on a school trip but instead you went to Quarry Bank Mill or Broomfield Agricultural College (sad but true). You could easily spend about a week in there and not see everything but we did a quick scoot about in a couple of hours before nipping to see the new president of the USA address the world.
Went out for tea again tonight and then Jim chilled at the hostel whilst I went to see the fireworks! The whole display took place in the harbour with thousands of people lining the waterfront and the fireworks being set off from boats in the middle of the water. They were probably the best ones I've seen in my life and included some awesome ones that looked like Saturn.
So that's it for the North Island. We're getting up stupidly early tomorrow to cross the Cook Strait to the South Island; so henceforth I will be only posting photos of me wearing eight jumpers and looking grumpy.
Love you all lots x x x
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