Wellington 2015

A friend and I were keen to keep a tradition going of hanging out in Wellington for a night while she is visiting New Zealand. Usually I just happen to be in Wellington for work at some part of her holiday so she flies down to meet me, but this time I had no work plans to be there so we flew down together to see the Air New Zealand 75th birthday exhibition at Te Papa.

I was excited to be sitting on the right side of the airplane as I could see the planes at the international terminal where I had been only two days earlier when we flew back from Sydney.

Plus we had a great view of the wind turbines and city as we landed.

We caught a taxi straight to Te Papa, dumped our bags at the front desk and explored.

There was even a place where you could fill out a memory card of your earliest memory of flying with Air New Zealand, this is my card…

There was a virtual reality area where you experienced what flying in the future could be like. It was my first experience of virtual reality and it was AMAZING, I really did feel what I was seeing was real.

I loved the exhibition and would happily go again. I even bought a couple of model aircraft as souvenirs – the Fokker Friendship which was my first plane to fly on and the NAC Boeing 737. After we had a quick wander around the rest of Te Papa.

Outside there is the nose of an old 737 that you could have your photo taken in but the queue was too long and the sun was too hot.

The weather was fabulous and we enjoyed a short walk to the hotel.

Dinner was in my favourite restaurant Portofino and my favourite waiter was there (he’d been away for a while on his OE). There was even a gorgeous sunset.