Day 5 - end of Sydney and arriving in New Zealand

Our last day in Sydney was anticlimatic, mostly due to the dramatic change in weather. The thunderstorms passed early, but the clouds and wind rolled in. We ate dinner at a meat and wine restaurant in Darling Harbour - I had the most fantastic pork ribs I've ever tasted! Then we headed next door to the IMAX movie theater to see Titanic: Ghosts of the Abyss in 3D. Pretty cool.

This morning we left for the airport. Flew from Sydney to Wellington. Took just 3 hours, and the in-flight movie was Finding Neverland (yeah!). Seems I left my copy of Lord of the Rings in our hotel room, so I bought and began re-reading a copy of Two Towers (that's, of course, the 2nd of 3 Lord of the Rings books). I find it appropriate reading now that we're in Peter Jackson's hometown and the country of "Middle Earth". Wellington is beautiful, and refreshingly smaller than Sydney. The skyline is shorter, the water is bluer. We checked in to our hotel, and walked over to the Te Papa Museum. It was excellent! Full of interesting exhibits about Maori culture, native animals, geologic wonders (NZ sometimes has big earthquakes and active volcanoes), and our favorite was an exhibit about NZ in the 70s. Apparently in NZ, they had a similar cultural revolution - full of protests and tacky fashion. Unfortunately we were getting tired and hungry long before we had a chance to see all the various exhibits. We had dinner in our hotel, which was ok.

So, here we are. We like New Zealand so far. Rich wishes we had rented a car here, and were driving north through the country. Oh well. Guess we won't risk dropping any rings into 'Mount Doom'.

-Carol