“Welly” is the nickname for Wellington, the capital city of NZ. It has the distinction of being the windiest city in the southern hemisphere and the southernmost capital city of any independent nation. We also learned today that Wellington is the coffee and craft beer capital of NZ. Woo-ee!

Welly sits on the Cook Strait, the water channel that separates the north and south islands of NZ, contributing to its winds which average 36 mph or greater 270 days per year. Here’s a wind chart that I saw today. We felt like Force 7 on land and Force 8 on the jet boat on yesterday’s excursion.

Wellington sits on or near 10 major fault lines. Isn’t the Ring of Fire fun? There was a bad earthquake here in 2016, but the damage and loss of life was far less than that of the 2011 earthquake in Christchurch.

Welly is also the movie capital of NZ. “The Lord of the Rings” was filmed here and our cruise line offered several tours that took people to movie sites and studios used for the film. The director of that movie placed a Hollywood-like city sign on a mountainside overlooking the city. Because of Welly’s high winds, the “o” and “n” are blowing away. (Cute.)

Author’s note: There’s a city sign like this in Medora, ND too, but its fame doesn’t go too far outside of ND.

Every city in NZ seems to have a botanical garden, and Wellington is no exception. The garden was our first tour stop. There was a small fountain at the center of the garden. We were about 100 feet away from it when a strong gust of wind passed through and we could feel spray from the fountain–even at that distance!. As a windy city, Wellington beats Chicago, hands down. The trees with the red blooms are usually called “Christmas trees” because they bloom at Christmas. They were really pretty.

Wellington is known as a very bicycle-friendly city. The bike lanes are marked in green (first picture below). If you ride a bike, you also have the right to move to the front of the line in traffic without passing “Go” at stoplights (second picture below). In NZ, McDonald’s is referred to as “the American embassy.”

These houses are four of what are called the “Seven Sisters”–seven similar houses in a row. If you buy one of these, you must sign documents that say you may make changes inside the house, but must keep the exterior as it is.

The entire side of one building was decorated with fish. The red boards on top of the car at the bottom of the picture look fish-like too. Or maybe like lips.

New Zealand is made up of small islands, but they are mountainous, so there are very steep hills everywhere in Wellington. (So what makes the city so bicycle-friendly?) In many places, the house behind another house is higher than the roof of the house in front of it. People who can afford it often install personal funiculars to take them from street level up to their houses so they don’t have to climb all those stairs. The white tube on the right is a funicular track; the funicular car is parked at the house (red arrow), so I think the inhabitants are probably at home now. Notice how vertical the funicular track is.

This was the original Parliament building, now used by the university. It was thought that stone was too dangerous for the exterior because of earthquakes, so the building was constructed of wood. The architect, however, designed it so that the exterior looks like stone–more appropriate for a government building.

Our final stop was at the top of Mt. Victoria, named for the English queen, of course. From the top of the mountain, we could see the city beneath us in every direction.

At the top of Mt. Victoria, there is a striking sculpture. The opposite end of the structure has a flat face with a bust of Admiral Richard Perry.

Our driver told us that NZ is a very progressive country. They gave voting rights to women forty years before the U.S. did, and they have a woman Prime Minister who is very popular. After her election, she announced that she was pregnant, which led to many male leaders insisting she should have made that information public before the election and questioning how she would govern with a baby and toys all over the government buildings. Her response was, “I’m not dying; I’m having a baby.”

Another sign of NZ’s progressiveness might be the rest room doors. Gender identification issues? No problem.