Beautiful Wellington

Greetings from Wellington. The city is very beautiful. Sally and I were discussing and we've concluded that the city is probably most like Oslo, Norway in appearance, but it has some characteristics that make it quite unique.

It's like Oslo because it is right on the water, it's hilly, and all the homes are wooden. But in driving around some neighborhoods on the way to our hostel, we both thought that the homes reminded us of Key West if you can believe it. Very bright-colored paints on the wooden homes with small to no yards and though we're now at the southern end of the North Island, there are still palm-like trees and other tropical-looking vegetation about. Perhaps a little more closer to home--the city also reminded us of Cincinnati--at least the Northwestern part in driving in. It was like driving in to the 'nati from the north on I-71--very steep, green hills, the highway plunging down to the water. So there you have it--Wellington is just a perfect combination of Oslo, Key West, and Cincinnati. Yeah.

P.S. (this is Sally) there is one ugly thing in Wellington... it's called the Beehive... it's the parliament building and it truly looks like a beehive. It's circular, kind of has a volcano shape, and these really ugly separators between the windows. It's tall and wide and so so so ugly. The old parliament building was pretty though.