The Busiest Ever Day in Wellington

I thought my last post was going to be the very last Rugby World Cup related post on this blog, but no..... it’s not all over yet!

This week the ABs have been tirelessly continuing to travel around the country for their victory parades, with Wellington’s turn on Wednesday.

When the lunchtime date was announced, my first reaction was that it was a great shame it was during school hours. The kids missed out on watching a lot of the games because many of the most important ones were scheduled late at night – we think to allow people from around the world to be able to watch them. So we were gutted to think that they might miss out on the celebrations as well.

However, Molly’s school quickly sent an email to all parents to say the children would be allowed out of school for this fine moment in history, as did many other schools in Wellington (although I heard one boys school has just given all those who attended the parade a detention).

The media estimates are that over 100,000 people lined the streets of Wellington, despite the crappy weather. This is around half the population of Wellington! To our wee kids this in itself was pretty unforgettable as until recently they lived in a community of only 27,000 (and 2,478 before that!). 

We chose to stand outside The Beehive so we could watch (prime minister) John Key greeting the team, a line up with the sparkly cup, and an unexpected Haka on the steps of Parliament.  

Despite the occasional reminders of being back in London (standing room only on the train, over-crowded streets, etc), the day was pretty phenomenal. WELL DONE THE ALL BLACKS!!!