Day 19 - Wellington on a Weekend (Sat, Mar 10)

Sadly, this morning we had to check out of our apartment-style hotel, the Capital View.  We liked it a lot, would have been happy to spend the whole weekend, but they were booked up.  We will be moving to the West Plaza hotel a few blocks down, but can’t check in until 2 p.m.   Parking is going to be an issue.  I've looked it up, and there are limits on all the street parking.  The hotel does have a limited number of parking spots available at $25 per night, first-come first-served, so we aim to check in early and nab one of those spots.

First stop is a Countdown grocery store.  JQ doesn't want to drive in Wellington, so I'm back at the wheel.  Thank God for the GPS, and OMG, Wellington’s roads are windy and narrow and shifting.  It is a bit nerve-wracking.  Fortunately, the Countdown has an attached parking garage (because street parking is non-existent).  Once again, we are purchasing groceries.  It is much cheaper than restaurants!

Te Papa Museum of New Zealand

Next, we drive back downtown to Te Papa (Museum of New Zealand), which fortunately has onsite parking.  However, due to the multitude of turning options, we miss the turnoff, and then have to circle around the block again to get into the parking lot.  You do pay for parking, but admission to the museum is free, so that works for us!

There are exhibits on the natural world, with a giant squid, sharks, a head louse.  Did I mention that my sister's kids had head lice at one time?  I now know what they look like when they are magnified many times their size. 😲  Yikes!

But the showcase exhibit is Gallipoli: The Scale of Our War.  It has a big lineup out front, and we hop into line, because as far as we can tell, that lineup isn't going to get any smaller.  I believe the exhibit was designed by Peter Jackson?  Weta Workshops definitely did the work on the larger-than-life figures and dioramas.

For those of you who don't know, Gallipoli was an important battleground in this corner of the world during World War I (which at that time was just referring to as the Great War, because no one expected there would be another world war).  For those of you who have seen the film Gallipoli, you already have an idea of what this exhibit would be about.

It is a really great exhibit.  They go big (literally), and they go small.  There are giant, detailed figures of the people whose life experiences before and during the war are being shared.

There are small things, such as exhibits where you can see the rations that were available and messages from home.  There are interactive exhibits where you can design a badge, or try on the army hats.

There are more immersive pieces, such as a "trench" that you walk through - it has video clips of other intersecting trenches, and you can hear the bombs dropping, and can actually feel the explosions underneath your feet.

There are scale models of the land, where you can actually see the troop movements happening during a battle while an overhead voice narrates.


It really gives you a picture of the war, the people who fought in it, the pain and the utter futility of it.  Truly, it is heart breaking.

Near the end, there is a section where they invite you to take a paper poppy, and write a message on it, either about the exhibit, or your own personal feelings.  Then, as you go out, you see there's one last giant figure of a soldier, and he is just surrounded by poppies piled up all around him.


It is a brilliant exhibit.  I like history to begin with, but I know a lot of people don't.  This exhibit really connects it to specific individuals, which I think really brings it home for people.

And WWI really sucked, that whole trench warfare was just hellish.  It was just a prolonged, painful, tragic mess that shouldn't have happened (but probably had to happen for people to realize it shouldn't). 😢

After that, we wander through a few other exhibits, until it's almost 2 p.m.  Time to go check in, because we want one of those coveted parking spots.

The West Plaza Hotel is only a few blocks away, but it takes a while in this traffic, and there are pedestrians everywhere.  Once again, we miss a turn, because the street splits in a way we didn’t expect and we are in the wrong lane.  We find the West Plaza hotel, but it’s like a store front downtown.  Where to park?  Fortunately, I do find a parking spot, but JQ doesn’t think I should try to parallel park.  No problem – we have a backup camera!  The backup camera is a godsend, and I execute a perfect parallel park, but even so, our car barely fits in the spot.  My tires are hugging the curb, and yet we’re almost hanging out into traffic.  This is the land of skinny roads and compact cars. Qashqai is not massive, but neither is he compact.

Oh, and want to hear something funny?  After I had parallel parked, another car pulled up beside me, intending to parallel park into the spot behind me.  Obviously wanting to signal their intentions, the driver hit the windshield wipers.  ~Wheep whoop~  Another foreigner learning to drive. 😄

We dart across the street into our hotel, check in, and demand their expensive parking.  Yes – we’ve got one of the coveted spots!  The desk clerk gives us instructions on how to find the parkade.  Our car is facing the wrong way, and there are one way streets on the following blocks, so we can only approach from the one direction.  Which means we need to dart into a parking lot to turn ourselves around.  We follow her instructions, but are then stymied by work barricades set up where we are supposed to turn.  What do we do now?  We drive a ridiculous number of blocks because of the one way streets, then try again.  Yes, there are barricades there, but I guess we’re supposed to squeeze past the barricades by driving on the sidewalk.  Yes, really.  OMG.  The car is bouncing over curbs and making pedestrians step back.  We pull into the parkade, and I am confronted by an impossible spot.  Everyone else has grabbed the possible spots, leaving me with the impossible-except-for-a-Mini-Cooper.

JQ hops out to scout ahead and discovers that there are four more spots through an alcove.  We drive in, and now I have my choice of two spots with pillars.  I start to pull in, then hesitate, and change my mind.  I am going to back into that space, otherwise I will never ever get out again.  There we go.  Car is successfully parked.  Whew!   That is a huge sigh of relief.  It is stressful driving in the downtown in this city.

The hotel lobby is fancy-shmancy, so not our usual place.  What do we get for all that fancy-shmanciness?  We get a small room, with the world’s tiniest fridge, no microwave, and a paucity of power outlets.  I think this is the smallest of all our hotel rooms yet.  We also get 1GB of data, which makes me mildly anxious, since I have to connect to work and do the timesheets.

JQ doesn’t want to go out again – it’s one and done for her.  I cannot possibly waste a day in a hotel room instead of going out to explore Wellington, so once again we part ways.

I ask at the front desk about the Internet, and it is 1GB of data per day, which is better, but is still less than elsewhere.  Chintzy jerks.  Oh well!

Fancy house, tilted street

I decide to walk up to the Mt Victoria Lookout.  As someone hailing from the prairies, I find it a novelty that the streets are so freaking tilted, with the cars perilously perched on the slopes.  I also find it a bit tiring walking uphill.  So much easier when everything is flat.

When I reach the park, the trails are all dirt pathways, very natural.  There are tons of trees, with the lovely sounds of birdsong all around.  I can hear a tui warbling nearby, and I also spy a fantail in the trees.  By the way, uphill is tiring.

At the top, it is pleasantly breezy.  Oh wait, this is not actually the top – there is one more mountain to climb.  I am feeling it.  On the road nearby, there are slackers who are driving up.


Finally at the top!  There is wind, and a lovely panoramic view of the city, as it stretches out on the hills all around the harbour.  There's not a lot of shade here, but the wind is refreshing, so I do dilly-dally up here for a while.

Painting a mural on his garage doors

When I head back down, I peer at my tourist map and decide to head down Hacker Street.  The houses are big and beautiful, some old, some not, all of them clinging to the hills that I'm toiling up and down.  At the end of the street is St. Gerard’s Monastery.  The building is closed at the moment, and it has a notice attached to it.  I read it, and essentially it says 'this building is not earthquake safe.  If there is an earthquake, you will be sorry.'  Especially because the building is perched on the edge of a cliff.  That would be awkward.

That being said, there's a mass tomorrow at 10:30 a.m., so maybe I'll risk it.  If I die in an earthquake (or cliff collapse), it is obviously God's will.

View from St Gerard's

Looking over the cliff, I see a beach below.  So, I descend down and down along these switchbacks that lead past residential homes.  Down and down and down, until I am at the bottom.  The beach is just across the street.

The first few steps on the beach are a little uncomfortable, due to the crushed mixture of shells and pebbles, but there is softer sand by the water.  I find some shells with creatures still in them, so I throw them back in the water.  I also saw a starfish as I walked along.

And then there was this man who approached me, who was worried about a kayaker who went out earlier and might be having problems with the current.  I do not know why I looked like someone who would know what to do.  I suggested he go to the lifeguard thingy (although I don't know if anyone was there).  No idea what happened after that.


But I made my way along the boathouses back to the main harbour.  There is lots and lots of entertainment in that harbour.  Places to eat and drink, singing going on.  I take the City-to-Sea Bridge (which is really cool) past the Library.  On my map, there is something called the Plimmer Steps, so I go see those.  They are full of markets, and they lead uphill, which can also get tiring.

At the top, I find another church, St Mary of the Angels.  There's a big display out front showing that they are fundraising to earthquake-proof their building.  I can also go to church there tomorrow.  Hmm.  Decisions, decisions.

I head back downhill to my hotel district.  As it turns out, I am not quite on the right street, but I am hungry, so I stop at Abrekebabra (which is a Turkish kebab place), and I buy myself some supper.  I thought a kebab was meat-on-a-stick, but this is more like a wrap.  Weird.  I take it to go, walk through a Wellington Night Market, and back to the hotel.  I say hello to JQ, who has been doing her laundry.  I stay and eat, then decide to head out again because I want to.

Back to the harbour, because there is so much going on there.  Behind Te Papa, I find the Solace in the Wind statue.  The sun is going down, so I head back.  Then, all of a sudden, there is music and flashing lights and marching drums.  It is a Gay Pride parade.  We missed the one in Sydney, Australia (which is really too bad, because it is apparently one of the best ones ever), but at least I caught up with one in Wellington.  I get rainbowed (they draw rainbows on my cheek).

I love Wellington.  It is just a fabulous city.  A bit perilous to drive in, but otherwise, it has so much personality.  Love it. 💜

Back to the hotel, and I should log on to do timesheets.  I now discover that JQ has already used up more than half our 1GB of data in watching cat videos and an Aussie reality wedding show called "Married at First Sight."
😟