We started the day today with excellent scone, croissant, and coffee at Extra Extra Caffetteria around the corner from our hotel, and then we proceeded onto Te Kopahou Reserve, which is on the south coast of Wellington. It’s quite rocky and rugged. We walked along the rocks for quite some time with Kaia without a stroller, and amazingly she walked the entire way with no fuss. She actually loved the walk quite a lot because it had some of her favorite things: rocks, endless sticks, and sea water! We stopped a lot to let her dig her hands into the rocks and water. She dug endless holes, threw pebbles into the waves, and poked her long sticks everywhere. And like me, when we got to more sandy areas, Pookster delighted in searching for shells. We got lucky and found some beautiful pearly abalone shells that were mostly in tact, but the laws are quite strict here in that you cannot remove anything – rocks, shells, plants — from the reserve. So I had to insist to Pookster many times that we had to leave the shells behind “for other people” to enjoy. It reminded me of a book I read recently that mentioned how young children are just innately drawn to nature: they love rocks, soil, greenery, water, sand. Anything that physically immerses their bodies into the earth keeps them happy and interested. And Kaia certainly loves digging her hands into sand, dirt, and rocks! She could easily have spent the entire day amusing herself in that one spot with the teeny tiny waves, teeny tiny pebbles and rocks.

In the afternoon, we went to visit the Beehive, aka New Zealand Parliament, and did an official tour inside. There were a few things I really enjoyed about Kiwi Parliament: a) you can park just outside the buildings, so it just feels very casual like any other office (this would never, ever, ever happen in the U.S.); b) former prime minister Jacinda Ardern (aka one of the most incredible women on earth) inaugurated an official children’s play space RIGHT IN FRONT OF THE OFFICIAL PARLIAMENT BUILDING. It’s this tall, windy slide that has a fun, modern, sleek, organic design that you can walk up and slide down — even I loved going up and down the slide as an adult! And then c) I really loved the Maori design elements throughout the interior of the Parliament buildings. There are doorways, paintings, sculptures – all hand carved or painted, and even inlaid with paua (aka abalone) shells in them. As a comparison, I could never imagine any Native American tribe being represented in the Capitol Building or at the White House in the U.S. There’s genuine respect for Maori culture in New Zealand… there’s really no respect at all for indigenous peoples of the U.S.