Three days in Wellington

We've spent the last three days in Wellington, which is a charming city. I already wrote a bit about Saturday, when we visited Wellington for the first time and saw some of the exhibits at Te Papa.

The weather was still nasty up on Sunday morning. Rebecca and I woke up early and got ready to meet Jennifer (Leggylass), who was graciously coming to pick us up. We were out on the curb at 9 AM, discussing how dead the campsite was, when we received a message from Jennifer making sure we knew about daylight savings time. It was actually only 8! We killed time until 9, and then Jennifer showed us the LotR sites of Wellington.

She took us to the quarry where Helm's Deep and Minas Tirith were filmed, although it was hard to make out where anything was. Then we went out to where Rivendell was filmed and also to the gardens of Isengard. It's crazy that all these things were filmed just outside of Wellington - they look like they are in the middle of nowhere in the movie! We drove up Mount Victoria a bit and then out to Miramar, which is where Weta is located. We drove by a pier where the Ventura (the boat from King Kong) is docked until they decided to sink it for a tourist attraction. We drove past a few other places of LotR significance (Chocolate Fish cafe, for one) and then returned to the Embassy theater to see Fellowship of the Ring. I haven't watched any of the movies in over a year, so it was very enjoyable to see one again, especially in that theater (where Return of the King had its world premiere).

Here are a few pictures. A bit of explanation - around the time Return of the King came out, the Embassy theater "sold" its seats and put little plaques on each of them to show who bought them. Here's the one that the theonering.net discussion board members bought:



And here's Rebecca sitting in Orlando's chair:



And finally, here's Rebecca and Jen:



After the movie, Jennifer went home and Rebecca and I went back to Te Papa while we waited for Alyssa (Choice of Luthien) to get off work at 6. She finally did and we had a good dinner at a place called One Red Dog (but terrible service). Unfortunately, we spaced and didn't get a picture with Alyssa this time. :( We took the bus back to the campsite and were both in bed within about 10 minutes of returning!

Monday morning arrived crisp and clear! What a relief to finally have some nice weather! Today we were meeting Daniel Falconer for lunch. We took the bus out to Miramar, arriving a bit too early, and had a very enjoyable and very quick lunch with Daniel before he had to return to work. He was very nice and aplogetic about not being able to show us anything, but that was okay.

Here we are with Daniel:



We did the tourist thing and wandered around a bit, and found this in the concrete outside Weta:



We went back into Wellington and did some shopping before taking the cable car up to the Botanic Gardens, which were very beautiful. Tired again, we took the bus back to the campsite just in time to receive word from Joanne (Eledhwen), who also happened to be in Wellington. We got back on the bus and met up with her for dinner at a wonderful restaurant recommended by Susan (Estelwyn) called Nicolini's, which was fantastic!

Here we are at dinner:



After dinner, we went back to the campsite again and went to bed.

This morning we got up early again to catch the ferry to the South Island. The weather has been beautiful again today and the ferry ride was excellent! Now we're in Nelson, which I'll make a separate post about shortly.