Windy Wellington was back with a vengeance for the weekend - winds of 50km per hour on Sunday with occasional gusts you could hardly walk against.
Our hotel was the Copthorne at Oriental Bay, near the water behind a run of cute little boathouses which seem essential to the yachting fraternity who use them for storage.
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| Mount Victoria overlooks St Gerards monastery to the left, the Copthorne right and bathing huts all along the shore. |
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| It's amazing what can be jammed inside a hut |
Te Papa (meaning treasure box) Museum is a fascinating place and we paid several visits: my favourite is the Air New Zealand exhibit with its flight simulator, display of uniforms and advertising over the decades including its latest air safety video with a Hobbit theme which has had 23 million hits on YouTube. We saw it in the plane and for once watched it.
You can watch it by clicking here:
You can watch it by clicking here:
Due to the magic of computers, they used only 29 actors in the battles scenes.
New Zealand is mad on The Hobbit and all the works of Peter Jackson - well his industry is a huge employer: even Te Papa has a fierce orc in its foyer.
New Zealand is mad on The Hobbit and all the works of Peter Jackson - well his industry is a huge employer: even Te Papa has a fierce orc in its foyer.
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| Not something you'd want to see in real life |
We saw The Hobbit 3 in 3D at the pictures and enjoyed the unrealistic violence, wholesale carnage and ducking to avoid falling 3D stones.
On Sunday we did a hop-on hop-off bus tour which was terrific: loved the view from Mount Victoria,
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| NZ Christmas tree in the foreground; looking towards the South Island |
lunch at the Botanic Gardens
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| David admiring begonias (out of the wind) at the Botanic Gardens |
and a great overall view of Wellington. Our second driver had a role as an orc in Lord of the Rings which he played for us on his iPad - he loved being an orc.
As we struggled against the wind to walk back to the hotel David spotted two enormous tree trunks and a guy carving totara wood in a workshop, so of course he had to have a chat.
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| David and wood-carver |
Later we went to see Into the Woods starring Merryl Streep as The Witch at the cinema which I loved. David said it was OK, he didn't go to sleep.
It was a wonderful few days in Wellington and we were blown away, literally and figuratively.
It was a wonderful few days in Wellington and we were blown away, literally and figuratively.
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