Summer in the City: Wellington’s full of surprises!

From November, Wellington revs up for a multitude of events: from small-scale festivals in the various suburbs to grander events in the city centre and surrounds; with the likes of the Meridian Energy Summer City and the New Zealand International Arts Festival. These continue well into March and there’s never enough time to attend all of them. You can find yourself wondering into the city for one particular event and staying for the entire day. This is exactly what happened to Chez Lee this Saturday.

We took the children to Capital E’s Christmas of Yesteryear ; where we walked down a Victorian street, sang Christmas carols in the setting of a Victorian living room, made crackers and printed our own cards on an old printing press. It was all very magical and felt extremely strange to Dan and I – since we grew up in England and the whole experience was a little like stepping into a time-machine and arriving on the set of a National Trust property!

When we emerged back in the present day of Civic Square, central Wellington, we were greeted by a wonderful festival for the ‘International Day of Action on Climate Change‘ that had set-up whilst we had been busy time-travelling. The girls enjoyed the music, story telling and face-painting, but were also very interested in the various displays (some a little alarming and prompting a few questions from Charlotte). Sophie was particularly excited by the large baskets of pea-pods on the Commonsense Organic stand and Charlotte enjoyed reading Forest and Bird’s Kiwi Conservation Club brochure on climate change.

After our fun and learning at the festival we walked to the waterfront, where Charlotte was very excited at the sight of pedalos! I sat on dry-land (and enjoyed a delightful ice-cream!).

Thankfully, Dan and the girls remained dry and I was then keen to move onto another event I’d spotted a little further along the waterfront – ‘The Firefighter Combat Challenge‘! David St George Photography exhibits the most AMAZING photographs of this event – check it out – it’s quite something!

So, bring on more of the same Wellington! We love Wellington (especially on a fine day!). It is a brilliant city to live in, especially in the summer and particularly when the cold Southerly takes a break from its frequent onslaught. ‘Windy Wellington’: Never!