Exploring, eating, and drinking our way through Wellington

On Sunday, we visited the Te Papa Museum on Wellington harbor, one of the country’s major tourist attractions. The building itself is beautiful; light-filled with large atriums and lots of glass that brings in light and offers views of the city and the waterfront. 

There’s a special exhibit right outside the front entrance that takes you one floor down and offers a peek of the building’s foundation, which was built on special spring mechanisms that would allow the building to sway, and hopefully not crumble, in the event of an earthquake.

There is no admission fee at Te Papa, but we start our visit inside with a one-hour guided tour with Marilyn, a museum volunteer. She walks us through and points out some of the major attractions and her recommended “don’t miss” exhibits. The museum is centered around teaching visitors about the New Zealand people and their cultures, as well as the country’s geology and history. 

One of the special exhibits that Marilyn suggested we experience took place in a simulated antique shop, called “Golden Days”, which offers a 15-minute film that offers a very broad overview of New Zealand history. As events unfold on the screen, some of the items in the antique shop “come to life”: a caged bird sings, cannons fire, toy soldiers march, and a player piano rolls out a tune.

A shout-out to our blogger friend Gwan – we thought of you during this exhibit, and wonder how many of the events depicted in the film would remind you of your time in New Zealand! Have you been to this exhibit? 

If you visit Te Papa, there are two museum attractions that the three of us would agree not to waste your time or money on: don’t buy tickets to the special motion rides that are supposed to simulate New Zealand adventures (bunjee jumping, motorcycle racing) and a submarine ride to an deep-sea volcano. Both offer lots of bouncing around, but offer no insights or information that couldn’t be presented in a more traditional exhibit.

Tonight, we are spending the night at The Museum Hotel, a beautiful, modern hotel filled with unique paintings, sculptures and other pieces of artwork. After our visit to Te Papa, we go back to the hotel and rest a few hours before showering and changing for dinner. It’s Peter’s birthday, so he gets to decide where we eat. 

We first stop at Matterhorn on Cuba Street for a cocktail, a very hip basement bar and restaurant, before we head further up the street to a lively, casual restaurant called Scopa, which offers pizzas and pastas. We split a bottle of wine and a small garlic pizza as an appetizer. I got the most delicious pasta dish for my entrée, which had wide noodles, chicken livers, beans, and a light cream sauce. 

After dinner, we walked up the street to Scotty & Mal’s, a watering hole, where we meet some fun locals and close out Peter’s birthday in style.

Sign, sign, everywhere a sign

In other words, "no fun"

Posted outside a Napier park.

A Napier flower shop with a sense of humor.

Ice cream with a bite.

The Wellington farmer's market

On Sunday morning, we gather at the local Denny’s for breakfast (yes, shoot me – we ate at Denny’s, but only because it was close and we were hungry). But before going in, we strolled through a local farmer’s market. It was early, but the place was already teeming with people, all looking to scoop up their fresh fruits and vegetables for the week. The displays were beautiful and the prices were very reasonable.

Onward to Wellington

We fly Air New Zealand from Queenstown to Wellington, with a very short layover in Christchurch. Just one year ago, on February 22, a terrible earthquake, measuring 6.3 on the Richter scale, killed 185 people, and leveled huge portions of the city. Local newspapers are filled with remembrances of lives lost, families, homes, and city buildings destroyed, and the ongoing efforts to recover.

We arrive in Wellington about 3:30 pm and grab a cab into city center, which sits right on the busy harbor. It’s also packed with young people and is very loud, thanks to a raucous music festival that’s being held in the city this weekend. 

The waterfront in Wellington, New Zealand.

We enter The Museum Hotel on Cable Street, but quickly realize there’s been a scheduling snafu, and we don’t have a room for the night! And because it’s the height of tourist season and the city is packed with music festival folks, the receptionist tells us finding any hotel room for the night is going to be tough. 

She speaks the truth. We fire up our laptop and iPhone and spend over an hour searching for a place to stay, but are finding that everything is sold out. We expand our search further and further outside the Wellington city limits, but it seems all of the island is booked. Finally, through some fancy phone work, Peter finds a couple of rooms at the Mercure, an economy hotel about a ten minute cab ride from the waterfront.

After checking in, we grab another cab back to the waterfont and take a quick walk through the music festival site. Yup -- it’s loud, I get it -- so we walk deeper into the city and hit the Kiwi Pub for a few pitchers of beer. We then visit a nearby Malaysian restaurant for dinner – spicy but delicious – and then a gelato shop (medicinal purposes only – it helps cool the burn from our meal) and call it a night.

Back to Queenstown for the night

After our shuttle driver drops us off back at the Real Journeys office in Te Anua, we return our luggage to the car, then walk across the street to a little pie shop. Not your typical sweet fruit pies – these are hefty, dense, and flaky-crusted meat pies – and they are DELICIOUS. Remember those frozen Swanson pot pies in the little metal tins you buy at the grocery store? Imagine those on steroids, and the flavor quotient being turned up a thousand notches. We sit outside the little café with our pies: creamy chicken for me, and Thai curry chicken for Peter and Mark. Mark also enjoyed a spicy ginger beer with his lunch; I sipped an ice-cold Coke. If there was a pie shop like this back in South Boston, I’d definitely be a regular.

We then pack back into our rental car for the drive back to Queenstown, where we check into The Queenstown Park Boutique Hotel, a lovely small inn that’s just a five minute walk from the thriving downtown and overlooks a beautiful green park and a rugby field. Our host John gets us settled; Mark decides to get a nap (making up for the sleep he missed out on while on Doubtful Sound), Peter heads out to the park to write some postcards, and I fire up the internet connection in our room and start organizing our photos from this trip.

While out back, Peter chats up a couple of young guys who’ve strung a cord between two trees and are practicing their tightrope walking skills. 

We later reconvene our on patio to share a bottle of Champagne, which I’ve been carrying around in my bag since we arrived in Auckland earlier in the week. It’s heavy and I’m happy to finally pop that cork! 

The hotel hosts a cocktail hour for guests from 6-7:00 pm, so we move onto the lobby for a glass of wine and a few appetizers. We meet “Rugie”, the afternoon manager, who is originally from France but has lived in Queenstown for the past seven years. He’s thoughtful and engaging, and we enjoy delicious New Zealand wine while chatting. He recommends “Flame” for dinner, where we sit on a terrace overlooking the harbor and enjoy a vegetarian’s nightmare: a sampler platter of ribs, steak, lamb chops, and a wonderful clove-tinged South African sausage, made in-house. Top that off with some French fries - and call it dinner!

A cloudy start on Doubtful Sound

We’re up at around 6:30 am on Doubtful Sound, and after a quick shower in the tiny stall in our bathroom, we head upstairs for coffee and breakfast. It’s much more cloudy, grey, and windy than yesterday, but it makes the scenery more dramatic. 

We have a few hours to cruise back to Deep Cove, and about a half-hour before we reach the dock, Peter catches sight of a pod of bottlenose dolphins off the starboard side (aye, look at me, talking like a sailor). Once we disembark from our ship, it’s back on the bus, then the boat across Lake Manapouri, and then a second bus back to our car in Te Anua. 

Here are some shots of the beautiful countryside we saw on the road back.

Nope, didn't feel the earthquake...

According to local news reports:
The North Island has been rattled by two earthquakes. A very deep magnitude 5.0 quake, centred 40km south of New Plymouth, shook Taranaki about 9pm on Sunday. The second quake, about 1am on Monday, struck within 5km of Whanganui. GNS Science says the magnitude 4.9 quake will have been felt throughout the lower North Island, however, no damage is expected.