Getting a Rogering at Te Papa. (Not that sort.)

With thanks to Experience Oz for this famil

The beds here at the Oaks Hotel are quite remarkably comfortable, the sheets silky smooth, and the pillows just right - so it was with some reluctance that I left mine this morning for our last day in Wellington.

The sun was shining as we popped up the hill to fashionably grungy Havana Coffee Works for one of Wellington's better flat whites (and that's a hard call) and then walked down to Te Papa for a private tour. I've been to the National Museum many times, but never on a tour and when we first met Roger I wondered if that was maybe a good thing.

He was full-on, was Roger. He's an OWM, and I started by bristling at his clichê jokes about Yes, dear and other comments verging on misogyny; but after a bit he either wore me down or won me over and I began to enjoy his enthusiasm, his energy, his professionally practised spiel and colourful turn of phrase. The Maori-European wars were all about "testosterone, adrenaline, feathers and dust"; Zealandia broke off from Australia "because you would, wouldn't you?"; and Maori soon saw off the moa because "look at the drumsticks on that chook!" 

His favourite word is "Amazing!" and it's always good to spend time with someone who loves their job, so I was pleased in the end to have him skim us over the surface of Te Papa in 90 minutes. Because that's all you can do, in an hour and a half: you could easily spend that just in the Gallipoli exhibition (which is so popular its run has been extended till 2021, but don't hang about).

I went back, myself, to have a closer look at the new Te Taiao Nature exhibition for a story, and enjoyed the jolly earthquake simulation, though it was sobering to absorb the general theme of Look what we're losing! Look after nature, please!

And then, after a solitary lunch, that was pretty much it, for Wellington, for this visit. I always like coming here, it's a great little city and there's always something new - or old, see Gallipoli, above - to enjoy. Why not come, yourself? Stay at the Oaks, and see how right I am about their beds...