Wellington. Our last stop on this trip before heading back to Sydney, Australia. We walked around town this time and didnt take a tour. Wellington is the 2nd largest city behind Auckland in New Zealand. It was cool again and a little rain but not too bad. We have experienced worse. We stopped to view the War Memorial. It had multiple war years depicted in remembrance. It was in the middle of town and couldn’t be missed.
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| War Memorial |
Very nicely done. Its nice to see the countries honoring their military is such ways. There are lots of museums here too. The most interesting for many people but not too much to us is the Lord of the Rings tour. It is located in a town north of Wellington called Middle Earth. The film studios, props, artwork from movie sets are in a mini museum. The renowned Weta film studios is located on the suburb of Miramar and is where one portion of Lord of the Rings was filmed.
As I understand it, there are many locations within New Zealand inwhich the filming took place. Sorry, just not interested but I’m sure it was a great experience for the Lord of the Rings clan. We spent a couple of hours walking and enjoying “land” before heading back to the ship. It was a short stop so that we could get a move on back to Sydney. We will arrive on Saturday.
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| The University of Wellington |
We’ll be in a hotel for 4 days and then back on another ship, a little larger than this one, for 10 days. We were scheduled to go to some of the small Pacific Islands east/northeast of Australia but some have stopped all cruise ships due to the corona virus pandemic. They cant afford for their small islands to catch this virus. It could wipe them out very quickly. For us, we received a notice that we will go to other small islands of New Caledonia and another Australian island.
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| I liked the Lion and Unicorn on top. |
The few Caledonian islands are requiring health insurance proof. Thank goodness we have international coverage! We bought a major medical policy that will cover us outside the United States. Chuck is covered under Medicare in the USA but it doesn’t cover international. This insurance will also allow us to have 45-60 days of coverage when visiting our home base as long as we renew it at the beginning of the renewal period and we are not in the USA at that time. We are scheduled to renew it in April before we arrive so hopefully it will all work out.
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| A picture of a picture. This cable care looked like fun but not in this weather. |
We are now on our way back to Sydney. We heard Tom Hanks is in Australia and has been diagnosed with the Coronoa Virus. I hope it all works out well for him. We also listened to the speech from President Trump and they have banned any travel between the USA and Europe. We are thankful we are not mixed up in that mess. Hopefully Australia will be able to keep it under control until we leave on April 9th (my birthday) for Panama.
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| Thankful we don’t need any. |
We haven’t heard any news about Panama or any of South America. That’s good. Lets hope and pray they find a cure or vaccine to help. God is good. May we always be blessed by His presence in our lives. We wish the same for you as well!
Chuck & Lea Ann
WorldTravelReynolds 