Our second full day in Wellington and I had another day of city touring and discovery lined up. After munching on some cereal and toast we had bought the previous day, we equipped ourselves with our now usual bits and bobs, Mike with his ball and camera, me with my camera, map and guide book, Conor with the rucksack to carry any extra bits and Gary just brings himself and his sunglasses!
Our first stop was Te Papa, National Museum of New Zealand, and a must for anyone visiting Wellington (according to the books anyways!). The museum is free to enter and is described everywhere as ‘a marvellous collection of all things New Zealand’ and ‘a full day could easily be spent here’. So we were very excited (well as excited as you can be about going to a museum)! Te Papa museum is situated on the waterfront and an ordinary enough building from the outside but inside it holds much history, information, active exhibits and interactive sections to make it all the more interesting and inviting. The museum has the latest in touch screen and interactive technology which really impressed Mike. One such exhibit had a giant fluorescent screen with various pictures and short media clips which could all be controlled with a wand stick, moving, resizing, playing and many other functions all by moving a stick! Really cool! Mike compared it to Minority Report where Tom Cruise’s character had the use of a similar device in one of the opening scenes, looking back on a murder. I taught it was a pretty good comparison.
Te Papa has 5 different floors and each floor has roughly 3-4 different sections so there is enough here to keep everyone entertained. However it has to be said we weren’t overly impressed with the whole museum and didn’t think it lived up to the hype of the guides and references. It wasn’t all that better than the Auckland museum so we had seen most of the stuff before. Top 2 floors were crap, one being an art gallery (boring) and the other being a small collection of trophies! This had nothing to do with ignorance towards culture, art or anything like that, it just didn’t float our boats at all. A main critique I would have of the museum is a lot of the objects and displays you are looking at are all recreations or models, not actual originals so for me personally that definitely takes away from the WOW factor. Having all that said the earthquakes and volcanoes section was good as was the wildlife section. It is without doubt an excellent museum for kids and families due to the wide range of interactivity and is a great learning centre. I guess we just know it all already and seen it all before!! In contrast to the descriptions, from us it merited a 2hr visit!
After our disappointment of the museum we hoped the day would get better as we headed to the Botanical Gardens. We got the old style Cable Car, originally built in 1902, and enjoyed the views from the top. The Botanical Gardens are peaceful and we enjoyed a really pleasant stroll around the gardens. There are many different trails around the grounds. As we walked through the gardens it felt like we were in the Amazon, the tall coniferous trees and New Zealand ferns climbed above us battling with the sun for the light. The only sound we could here was the chirping of the birds and the swoshing of the wind as it swooped through the forest; you wouldn’t think we were less than 1km from the centre of the capital city of New Zealand. The central crowd pullers of the gardens are the begonia house and the fragrant Lady Norwood Rose Garden which we also paid a visit. We soaked up the tranquillity of the setting by tucking into a delicious muffin in the Begonia House café.
We continued walking north to the Parliament district where we seen the Parliament Buildings – the modern Beehive, the neoclassical Parliament House and the Gothic Parliament Library. Each of contrasting periods and highly individual structures but somehow manage to sit quite harmoniously together. We last stop was the new St. Pauls Cathedral, an Anglican church. One thing about the Anglican church is they are much more subtle about their reverence for God. All the Anglican churches or cathedrals are modestly decorated on the inside compared to the lavish, in your face decoration of the Catholic equivalents.
That evening myself and Mike went to meet Ollie (a freestyler) and one of his mates at the Civic Square where they practiced and shared some freestyle moves and chit chat. Mike will have quite a web of contacts built up by the end of this trip.
Sin e an sceal,
Tom
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