.

The weather certainly has not been what we thought it would be this trip. We had planned for Summer in Australia, hopefully in the 80s, but have ended up being thrown directly into Fall. Along with much cooler temperatures, we have storms which have completely rearranged our carefully chosen itinerary. While we are in agreement with Oceania's decisions to avoid bad weather for safety reasons, it is still disappointing to know that we will miss Dunedin and the whole South Island and especially cruising through the fjord of Milford Sound. However, we are on our way to Wellington, just on an earlier date. Our Wellington excursion, a day with Wellington's Top Chef has been cancelled because of the date change and there was very little available as a substitute since most people had already booked the other excursions. We have grabbed the last couple of seats on a Highlights of Wellington tour on the afternoon we arrive. So in the meantime, we are enjoying our 2 1/2 days at sea by reading and working on our journal, etc. We have eaten in the Grand Dining Room and Jacques for dinner and been to the brunch, complete with string quartet, prior to arriving in Wellington.

We are pulling into Wellington at around 1pm and our excursion starts at 1:45pm. After some discussion and e-mailing back and forth, we established what cruises our "cruise friends" Dick and Peg are signed up for in January 2015 and decided we would like to spend that 20 days in the Caribbean with them. So much for the "no more cruises" statement. We have been to the Caribbean on the smaller ship about 5 years ago and have stopped in some ports, but with these two cruises back-to-back we cover many more ports, like San Juan in Puerto Rico and the ports in Mexico, Honduras and Costa Rica they call they Mayan Mystique at Oceania. So Daryl spent an hour waiting and then signing up with Carlos in order to get all the advance booking, on board booking and any other early booking benefits available.

We headed down to the Marina Lounge to get our bus tickets for the excursion to find just about everyone on board trying to get off at the same time. Usually, they allow the tour people off first, but all the independents were already in line before we even docked so it was quite a free-for-all. The water level in Wellington is fairly low so they could only use one exit (usually they open another one on a lower deck for people with mobility issues and wheelchairs or walkers) which meant it was slow going getting down the stairs. We finally got through the crowd and on to the bus to meet our very jovial driver/guide who took us around the city for 3 1/2 hours in weather that got windier, cooler and finally rainy. We drove to the top of Mount Vic(toria) for a panoramic 360 degree view and to see the memorial to Admiral Robert Byrd, the American explorer. He showed us the original houses of Wellington, that were being torn down and replaced by expensive modern buildings until the Historical Society intervened. We drove through the University area, up to the top of the Cable Car track and then down to the rose garden at the base, part of the Wellington Botanical Garden, where we saw the greenhouses containing huge and beautiful begonias and many strange succulents. Our next stop was the Parliament Building, the Parliamentary Library and The Beehive, where the House meets. Then we headed to Old Saint Paul's, an all wood church built in the 1840s and since replaced by New Saint Paul's Cathedral near Parliament. It is no longer an active church, but has a very strong tie with the US due to placement of the US Marines' Second Division which was stationed in Wellington during WWII when all of the Australian and New Zealand troops were fighting in Europe and the Middle East (e.g. Gallipoli) and Australia and New Zealand were left virtually undefended until the Americans came to help. There is a US flag (with 48 stars) and a Marine flag hanging in this lovely building, which has been maintained in perfect shape.

After a wet visit to Old Saint Paul's we headed back to the port and relaxed until dinner at Red Ginger.