New Zealand, Part 8: Wellington

After a great first afternoon in the capitol city, we spent a beautiful day in Wellington. Although I liked downtown and the coastline, I was pretty antsy. After seeing so many beautiful places in our first week, staying in Wellington felt a lot like staying in any city--although Wellington was a lot more charming than average--and parking and walking through shopping malls seemed silly, when we could have been running through the wilderness.

 Most of the city runs along the shoreline. The water is bright blue and smells wonderful.

We visited the Museum of New Zealand, Te Papa Tnogarewa. We had a lot of questions that our cheesy guidebooks couldn't answer, so exploring the museum was very interesting. I liked the natural history section, with all the volcano and earthquake exhibits. The natural history section with the sometimes sad, sometimes inspiring history of the Maori's interaction with colonial settlers was probably the most interesting thing to me. These early people, from varied backgrounds often raised havoc on the landscape. They wiped out species of bird and seafood for food, and fought each other in bloody wars that didn't end until the 1800s. I think all the early violence contributed to the current attitude about their landscape, which is one of active conservation. We heard countless stories of species conservation, where people go to extraordinary lengths to grow populations of birds from 10 members to 100, for example. They also had a no-nuclear policy in the century, which I think is a testament to their somewhat gruesome past and a move toward peace. It was refreshing to meet an entire country full of people, who have such a pride for the place that they live and an ownership of their, sometimes unflattering, history.

I have to say, one species that I didn't miss was the Moa. Huge bird. Don't like birds. Not a huge fan of the giant eagle, with the 9-foot wingspan either. 

Here's a picture of Michael and the Moa, for scale. He looks a little worried too.

The view from the top of the museum was not too shabby. 

 We hiked to the high-point of the city, where there is a beautiful park, to take a look around.

Here's a windy video. If you listen closely, you can hear two local kids asking German tourists to meet them in town later. International love.

They did some filming for the Lord of the Rings in the big park at the top, so Michael and I took the shortcut to mushrooms to visit one of the first filming locations.

I had my eye out for black riders, but the coast was clear.  

We stubbled upon a beautiful rose garden. That seemed to happen to us, quite a bit. It was a holiday in the city, so the rose garden was full of picnicking families and teenage couples.

That night, we went to the Hobbit. The theater was pretty amazing. It was the location for the premier of all the other movies, which was very cool. although we were disappointed that their was no formal premiere for this movie. The theater has looked pretty impressive in the past:

It was 400 seats at least, and felt more like going to the theater, than the movies. There was a restaurant and a lounge and no one was wearing jeans (luckily Michael and I were out of casual clothes, so we accidentally looked pretty nice too). It reminded me of France, where they have enthusiastic paper airplane contest before the movie starts.

We were pretty excited:

Overall, I disliked the 3D and longed for fewer visual effects and more shots of beautiful New Zealand, but the whole experience made for the best trip to the movies that I've ever had.