New Zealand is a civilized, tidy, well-mannered place

In New Zealand, people go barefoot in public — the grocery store, restaurants, convenience stores — and no one bats an eye.

I even saw a guy riding a motorcycle barefoot (though he was wearing a helmet, which is required by law).

Other than that, it’s a civilized place where people deftly maneuver roundabouts, have heated towel racks in their bathrooms and take morning and afternoon tea breaks.

New Zealand was the first country to give women the right to vote in 1893. (Kate Sheppard, the country’s most famous suffragette, is on the $10 bill.)

New Zealand has three official languages — English, Maori and sign language. It has one of the world’s highest rates of internet access.

All children up to age 5 qualify for free health care. Child care is subsidized.

It’s noticeably tidy, though there’s rarely a garbage can in sight. (People carry their trash until they come across one.) There’s just enough water in the toilet bowl to conserve water, and two buttons to flush it, one for No. 1 and a more powerful one for No. 2.

They don’t tip because the minimum wage is $17.70 an hour. (We still tipped sometimes. “Sorry, we’re American,” I’d mutter. No one turned it down.)

It wasn’t only the everyday things, the polite way of speaking, children calling me “Miss.”

It ran deeper than that. It felt safe there. (New Zealand rates as the world’s second safest country after Iceland.)

I didn’t see one gun, not on police officers and not in the aftermath of a March 15 mass shooting at two Christchurch mosques that left 51 people dead.

Less than a month later, Parliament voted 119-1 to ban military-style semiautomatic weapons. No one says the gunman’s name. Victims were mourned in a national memorial service.

It’s very civilized. In every sense of the word.