Wellington waterfront looking toward the marina at Oriental Bay.

It is a glorious Monday morning in Wellington. R has his first day of orientation today so I ventured out on my own. Risky. This is a compact but twisty-turny city and I'm not so good with direction, as any of you running buddies can confirm. But I did OK. My first destination was the local running store, "Shoe Clinic," to ask if they had any running routes in the area. They offered to sell me a book for $15. I tried to memorize a few before walking away. By the way, for the cost-of-things scoreboard, Gu packets cost $5. I knew I should have brought my stash along with me. Not that I've done any distance that requires fuel.

Based on the suggestion of that Shoe Clinic book I went hunting for a walkway along the Wellington waterfront that promises 30k of automobile-free path. It delivers! Gorgeous. I saw lots of runners, walkers, and cyclists and I love the water fountains peppering the trail. We'll be hitting that pavement this evening, I think. Remember, it's coming on summer here, so we have daylight until ~8:30.

My next stop was the Wellington City & Sea Museum. I liked it better than Te Papa. NZ (aka "Aotearoa") is a really young country. It fell into all of the same racism, sexism, and population expansion problems (hygiene, housing, employment) the US faced. Too bad. It was interesting to see how events in the US (especially stock market crashes) affected this part of the world. NZ talks a lot about its people's spirit of equality, so I was surprised to learn that New Zealanders of German and Asian descent were rounded up into camps during WWII, for example. That's a shameful part of US history, too.

Next door to the City & Sea Museum was the NZ Olympics Museum. I had to stop in there. The personal stories depicted there were quite moving. Again, such a young country! The first NZ woman to compete in a modern Olympic Games competed in 1920--Violet Walrond, a 15-year old swimmer--was the country's ninth Olympian.

Then back to the hotel and my jar of peanut butter....