Wellington

2-4-2014

     Once we docked we found a place to make dinner, then a place to sleep, just outside of Wellington. We went back to the center of the city the next day. We found parking right in the middle of downtown and walked around for a couple hours. We went to the i-site but didn't learn anything new. We walked around the huge public library and through the plaza behind it, and all around downtown. There wasn't much to see that we hadn't already seen before, so we drove to a different part of town. We drove to Wellywood, or at least that's the nickname. It's where the movie studio is that helped produce movies like The Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit, Narnia, Avatar, Master and Commander, and a whole slew of other movies that have fantastic special effects. This studio, called the Weka Cave, was responsible for things like costume and design, sound effects, miniatures for filming... all sorts of cool things! So, we took a tour. I still maintain that I'm not a film nerd, far from it, but this was cool. We got to see all sorts of props from a lot of movies, especially The Hobbit, and meet people who designed them. It was fascinating. Totally worth the twenty bucks. It was an hour long, and over too soon. I took some pictures of the trolls out front and eventually left. 

      Mount Victoria Lookout was said to be a worthwhile detour from downtown, so we headed there next. The road up to it wound around a residential hillside, and each house had a heck of a view. The road itself was chaotic, though. Cars were parked on both sides, narrowing the whole road down to a single lane. It was so curvy that it was just a succession of blind corners, although that's pretty standard in New Zealand. But the combination of the two is what made it really scary, plus the heavy traffic. Tourists and locals both crowded the streets, and garbage trucks barreled their way along, regardless of the havoc they seemed to be aiming for. They didn't slow down for anyone, no matter how unsafe or rude it was. Luckily we got to the top without any incidents, and the view was great. The view we had of Christchurch was better, but the cool thing with this view was the ability to watch planes land and take off at a fairly close, birds-eye view. That was neat. We ended up spending at least a half hour up there, if not a full hour. We left because I had to pee, and there were no toilets available. Oh yeah, they call them toilets here, not bathrooms. I'm afraid that's a term I might accidentally bring back with me. 

      Anyhow, we went back to the main part of Wellington, but this time we parked over in the business section. Lawyers offices in tall buildings lined the streets, and there were parking garages at every block. However, we parked on the street again because there was plenty of parking. We walked toward the big dome building which I recognized as their central government building, which I was sure would have a public bathroom. There turned out to be one out front. 

      Next, we hooked back around on the parallel street just below the one we parked on. This street was lined with classic, old buildings with fancy trimmings and even a few roman columns. Some were brick, some were stone. Most stone buildings were yellow but some were white, swirled with grey. I was fascinated, but I'm a nerd for art and architecture. 

     The shiny lawyers towers could be seen behind the older, shorter buildings, which made for a really cool looking city-scape from the street. And unlike the street above it, this street was packed full of shops, restaurants, and a few street vendors. We bought a few amazing cookies, still warm, from one shop that smelled too good to pass by. I ducked into more than a few shoe stores, drooling over all the boots, and Luke didn't even seem to mind. He even encouraged me into a clothing store because there was a sweet, fuzzy, zebra face sweater on display in the window. It was so cool. Unfortunately, it looked ridiculous on me (my wide shoulders make it hard for me to pull off the petite look, and by hard I mean impossible), but I almost bought it anyway. My anti-spend-money mindset saved me. 

     We got sick of shopping about the same time the stores started to close, conveniently enough. We settled on a place to eat dinner and talked about wether or not we wanted to stay another day. I was  craving more of a city setting after all this time camping, and I love cities, but we both felt we had seen most everything worth seeing so we decided to move on. I can only take so much shopping, after all.