Art, wind and politics would sum it up for me. Wellington is a nice town, the setting on the harbor is amazing…. the town itself reminds me of Seattle or Portland in the US… same style of houses, the street art, the slightly artsy, alternative feel.

On Friday I went up to the Botanical Garden with the city’s cable car (Swiss made), had a look at the Planetarium – without going in, it was too nice outside – walked in the Park and then down again.

Downtown has a couple of office buildings, but as a capital city, the main landmarks are all government buildings, notably the Parliament complex.

I did a tour through it, an informative trip through New Zealands politics, from colony to self-government to independence. They had some bad luck with their parliamentary buildings in Wellington as they tend to burn down, but each time they built them up nicer and bigger…

Connected to Parliament is one of the landmark buildings, appropriately nicknamed the beehive, for its obvious shape, which is the seat of government. They just walk over into Parliament, which is in the old building, in a wooden chamber inspired by Westminster. The political system was pretty much taken over from the mother country.

However, in the 1990s they changed to a representative election system, which put an end to the two-party system. Today, New Zealands Parliament is quite diverse, and notably has a strong Māori presence. While a number of seats are reserved for them (currently 7 out of 121), 20% of MPs are actually Māori, which is more than their share in population (about 15%).

Women hold 30% of the seats, not too impressive, but the country has already had two female prime ministers, and was the first in the world to give the vote to women in 1893…

Around Parliament are a number of other state institutions, from the high court to the archives, ministries and the British High Commission (their sort of embassy).

It’s close to the waterfront (but then, nothing is far form the water in Wellington), a former industrial harbor area that has undergone redevelopment and now is home to a number of restaurants, bars, convention spaces, museums, promenades, markets and art…

You could do an art walk in Wellington, walking from statue to statue… I finished the day by walking home along the water, through the cranes, former wharfs, sheds, restaurants… to the Museum of New Zealand, Te Papa Tongarewa.

I visited the museum on sunday, after a stroll through the culinary delights of the Sunday Market around it. The museum has everything Kiwi, from Maroi art, Kiwi painters, NZ history, geology and its unique fauna and flora. In that it resembles Auckland’s War Memorial Museum, albeit being more modern in presentation and style.

Wellington is not big, roughly 400 000 people for the whole area, half of that for Wellington Proper. You can feel that, a lot of shops, and even the restaurants and cafés might close relatively early. But all in all a nice, interesting, relaxed city. They call themselves the capital of cool.

It is a very windy city though. The local geography speeds up the winds, and Wellington has measures wind speeds up to 270 kmh. Always bring a jacket.