Wellington Weekend

Our last few days in Mangawhai Heads came with a big change in the weather. A major storm on Monday, with rain for almost 24 hours, left the sand bar between the sea and the estuary almost completely swamped, and the sun rose into an angry sky. The weather remained grey and damp for the next few days, making it easier for us to concentrate on packing up to move along.


On Thursday we headed south again, stopping first in Auckland to leave a few suitcases with Wendy's sister Deborah (thanks, Deb!) for storage until our return. Time to leave the warm weather clothing behind and cuddle up into sweaters ("jerseys" in Kiwi) for the colder South Island weather. They had a freak early snowstorm in Central Otago this week! Hope they get that melted before we arrive mid-May!

One of our brief stops along the way was at Stormy Point lookout near Feilding (yup, it IS spelled that way), where we could see all the ancient river terraces marching across the local geography.


Another quick bike-part-buying sidetrip to Palmerston North, then an overnight stop (and delicious dinner) with our ever-welcoming friends, the Woodbridges, in their Marton home.

Next morning we carried on south. We made another stop at the home of Len and Denise Berg, near Waikenae, to check on the progress of the containerizing of Frank's new stash of motorcycle bits, which will be on its way to Canada before we are. There we admired the new addition to Denise's collection of Hard Rock cafe teddy bears--the one from Montreal! Thanks, Ellen, for taking care of sending that for us!

Then on to Wellington where we splurged a bit and stayed in the James Cook Hotel Grand Chancellor. It was well worth the expense, and we luxuriated in the king-sized bed, deep bathtub, full-on water pressure, television that included CNN (which we quickly realized we had not missed at all), lavish breakfast buffets, and in-room movies. Our 24th floor room provided gorgeous views of Wellington in the twilight, and I had some fun with 'creative' photography.



On Saturday morning, after a breakfast that offered every choice imaginable, we strolled through the city, enjoying the beautiful old buildings and civic sculptures along the way, to Te Papa, Wellington's rightly famous museum.


I was very excited, because I had discovered by chance that a new Lord of the Rings exhibit had opened there--featuring a lot of the original artwork, costumes, props, and miniatures, many of which will never tour outside NZ.


What a joy to wander through this HUGE collection at our own pace, with only a small number of fellow viewers--what a contrast to the shuffle-shuffle-lockstep-neck craning parade we were forced into when we viewed the much smaller touring exhibit in Toronto some years ago! Many things here were no longer on view even at Weta Workshop (which we were privileged to have visited in February), including the 'bigature' of Minas Tirith (truly awesome in its detail), Arwen's coronation gown and crown (exquisite needle and beadwork), and a full-sized Black Rider (genuinely scary). It was great fun, even though no photos were allowed inside the collection. I did get some photos of the model of the Corsair ship in the lobby, the 'new' Weta collectable miniature of Peter Jackson as a Corsair pirate, and the models of the Argonath at the exhibition entrance--see below.





As well, we got a unique souvenir. They had a set-up with two cameras that revealed how they had managed the scale issues in LOTR, and here's our photo of me as a cozy little hobbit, and Frank as a towering wizard! We also have a reverse shot, but somehow I prefer this one--seems to suit our characters much better!


I also found out that The Embassy Theatre here in Wellington is re-staging the three LOTR movies, on a series of Sunday afternoons, and I am trying to convince Frank that I NEED to see Return of the King in its hometown theatre when we come back through Wellington at the end of May. Hope we can arrange it--it would be a great finale to my Kiwi LOTR experience.

For his part, Frank was pleased to have a chance to have a close-up view of John Britten's racebike.



We also saw a gorgeous special exhibit of historic Japanese art and artifacts. We'll have to save the rest of the museum for another trip--there's "heaps" (as my Kiwi friends say) more to see, but we had no more time. On our way back to the hotel, we discovered that Kiwis are really serious about training their kids to take advantage of NZ's many adventure sports--look at this baby-bungy-jumping apparatus!! We had a very pleasant visit with Linda and Robert Burgess for afternoon tea (ok, wine), a fabulous buffet dinner back at the hotel (more about that on the next posting), and a very quiet night--up early in the morning for the ferry!