[update: added three panoramas]
Parking our campervan behemoth in Wellington was probably going to be impossible, so we parked it at the Porirua train station and took the train in from the suburbs. We were quite worried about the safety of the campervan during our absence …
Wellington is a bit like Auckland in landscape, but more “lived in” and less sterile. Lots of business people doing their thing — 
and government-looking types, since this is the capitol city; here you see the parliamentary buildings, including the “beehive”. We headed down the main shopping drag, and turned into a shopping district called Cuba Street that was much like Little Five Points or Haight Ashbury. We stopped in at Tattoo City where Dan was scheduled to mark up Sharon’s right arm that evening. She looked over drawings and made arrangements to return at 6 pm for the work.
That taken care of, we wandered into the National Tattoo Museum, which varied from underwhelming (poorly lit displays of dusty artifacts) to mildly interesting (mounted printouts of webpages) to embarrassing (modern tattoo artwork). Fortunately we didn’t go too far out of our way or pay too much.
We then headed back down to the bay to the National Museum of New Zealand, aka Te Papa (Maori for “The Museum). Maybe we’re burned out on museums but it wasn’t as impressive as Auckland’s or Rotorua’s (more below, however). We had a tight schedule so we got out of there and took a stroll along the bayside docks (and shot the panorama below).
From there we then walked over to the Lambton Quay area to catch the cable car up to the top of the mountain on that side of town. At the top of the cable car landing was the lovely Botanic Garden with a spectacular view of Wellington city and harbor below.
The gardens are many acres of winding paths that eventually work their way back down to city streets at the bottom of the hill. When in wooded areas we keep hearing the “clapping cicada”, which is a cicada that makes deep clicking noises in addition to the regular cicada sound. In fact, the cicadas were deafening! We worked our way to the bottom of the hill through the gardens (and the obligatory stop at the duck pond) and caught a bus back into the center of downtown and the tattoo parlor.
Sharon and Dan set to work on the arm. The tattoo that Sharon and Dan designed incorporates the Koru, which is the Maori spiral symbol for the life cycle, and the fern, which is the national plant (and one of Sharon’s favorites). This picture shows the tattoo right after it was finished. It’ll be a little different after the swelling goes down and the healing starts. Sharon has two tattoos from two different countries where tattoos are a huge part of the culture. While Sharon was in the chair for 3 hours, Chris went back to the Te Papa museum and was able to spend a full hour in their excellent whales exhibit — a special exhibit on another floor that we’d missed the first time through. Te Papa has been redeemed! Chris also tried to get up to the top of Mount Victoria to get a nighttime view of the city but missed the last bus …
Sharon’s tattoo now finished (apparently with much pain), Dan generously offered to drive us back to Porirua train station to pick up the camper. He lived only 5 minutes away from Porirua and said that that area was gang-infested and dangerous at night and he didn’t want us going there at night, alone. Oh. 
Well, we pulled into the station parking lot to find our campervan intact and unharmed! At 10pm we pulled back into the Porirua campground — this being the second night there, and the only time this trip that we’ll stay with the campervan overnight in one place twice!
We’ll end with a shot of the campground. Obviously this is a view up the heavily forested hillside; you can see the huge eucalyptus trees, which are native to NZ and seen everywhere, and NOT invasive like in California … If you look close you might see a duck or two in the picture.