Pictures from Wellington, New Zealand

Well, I'm in Christchurch now.  But here is a little update from Wellington.

First a few facts:

• Wellington is the capital of New Zealand.
  
• It sits on a large bay with mountains all around.  Sort of like San Francisco.  But much smaller - there are about 150K people in the city and about 400K in the metro area.
• This is where the Lord of the Rings movies premiered.  I just saw a little news blurb this morning that someone (Peter Jackson? Guillermo Del Toro?) is making a two-movie adaptation of The Hobbit, both being filmed here in New Zealand.
• I went to see the new Indiana Jones movie at the theater where the Lord of the Rings movies opened.  The theater is cool; I was a little bored with the movie.

Anyway, below is a picture of the mountains around Wellington.

Here are a few pictures of the harbor of Wellington.  You can pretty much walk along the harbor from one end to the other in about 30 minutes.  The major cultural buildings are strung out along the waterfront.

Me trying to get some Art in my photos.....

I stayed at a place up in the hills above Wellington.  Every day I walked down the "mountain" and back up at the end of the day.  New Zealand is really good at having all sort of urban tracks and paths for walkers.  The path I took went right up the hillside; sort of hard to walk it (but good exercise) and definitely safer than walking on the roads that twisted up the hills!

This is a little house that I passed every day.  Totally needs repair - a good paint job and tender loving care.  But it has this great bell hanging by the door instead of an electric bell.  And it has a TV dish!

This is the view from the window in the room I was in!  That's Wellington down there at the bottom of the hill.  In the morning the sun came up over the mountains off in the distance....I don't usually see the sun rise, so it was pretty cool.

In addition to walking all over I did a few things while I was in Wellington:

• Visited a fantastic museum called Te Papa.  It's the national museum.  Covers geography, history, art, Maori history, emigration, etc.  I'd like to learn more about the Maori history and culture, but I'll do that when I get back to the States.  Otherwise I'll have another 15 pounds of books to lug around!
• Took the train to Porirua (a small town north of Wellington) to visit a small museum called Pataka.  It was showing two interesting exhibits - one of Samoan artists living in New Zealand and one of Native Americans!  That was cool.
• Saw the New Zealand Symphony.  They played the Brahms Symphony No.1 and the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto.  It was great - maybe I just needed a classical music fix, but I think they were actually really good!  They played with a lot of passion and energy.
• I also say a Tango performance that was part of a Tango Festival.  Sadly it wasn't very good!  :-(    But you can't win them all, right?

Anyway, I also went to the Botanical Gardens, but I'll post some pictures of that in the next blog.