We arrived in the afternoon on February 5th. We checked into the Bay Plaza hotel, which is right at the start of Oriental Parade, a long coastal road along the western side of Wellington Harbor. We had a room on the front, so we could see out over the downtown and some of the bay, as well as the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa pretty much right in front of us.

It was pretty early, so I called Venise to say "we're here!" and check in with plans to meet up at the Te Papa the next day to go see the Lord of the Rings exhibition. I'd forgotton that the 6th is Waitangi Day, NZ's biggest holiday, so the exhibit would be full of kids rather than nice and empty. However, I'm glad Venise didn't have to take any extra time off work. I also got a dinner recommendation for sushi at a place called Hede.

As it was still early, we decided to go looking for one of the filming sites for Fellowship of the Ring. The sequence when the hobbits are on the Road, and find mushrooms, and are hiding from the first Black Rider was filmed in a park right in Wellington. As it happened, we were very close to Mt. Victoria Park, so off we went.

We knew the guide book's directions were iffy from our trip to Matamata, but really, describing a location as being the third turn to the left, and then not specifying which END of Alexandria road to start from is just insane. However, after a stop at the lookout for a look across the harbor to Miramar, home of WETA, we eventually found a likely curve in the road, and the other directions seemed to match up. We got out and hiked a bit into the park and, in short, we're pretty sure we found the spot.

We took some video and then started back. It's a beautiful pine woods forest in its own right, and I'm glad we got to see it and smell the great forest scent. We drove back down the steep winding roads to the hotel. Parking in the downtown seemed pretty difficult, so we decided to leave the car in the hotel parking lot as much as possible.

We walked a few blocks into downtown and went to Hede. It was a nice low-key place, with good sushi. It was funny to notice the differences; for example, none of the tunas were on the menu (tuna, belly, yellowtail) but there was plenty of salmon and the whitefish, which is usually a bit of a filler, was excellent. Also funny to look around a restaurant full of people our age and realize there's absolutely no chance we'd recognize any one. I think because it felt so much like NYC, where if we went to a sushi place full of people our age, we'd have a decent shot of recognizing at least one person. Full of sushi, we walked back to the hotel after dinner and called it a night.

We got a really wonderful breakfast at the Vista Cafe, just around the corner on Oriental Bay, and really eased into the morning. We were probably lucky it was open on a public holiday. After some excellent Flat White (aka cappuchino or strong latte, they seemed to use it interchangeably) and good food, we walked over to the Te Papa.

We met Venise and her partner Ross at the entrance, under the Argonath statues. It was great to see her after 16 years, glad she still looks the same! She's doinng market research and likes it, and met Ross when they were both working for the government. He still is; he's the person who calls up the winners of what used to be knighthoods and are now called NZ Honours to tell them they've won! Pretty nice job.

So, no cameras allowed in the exhibition, so we checked them in our bag so there'd be no temptation, and off we went. The exhibit is enormous, a collection of props and costumes from the movies (the first two -- they're not giving anything away about the third) with interactive video interviews and demonstrations. There was a weapons exhibit that you could touch; the real sword, the rubber sword and the light aluminum sword -- all identical until you touched them. There was also a section of the pvc ring chainmail to touch, and a video about the thousands of hours of work it took to make enough chainmail for everyone.

They also had an exhibit about the bigger/smaller effects using Gandalf's cart, which you could have your picture taken on -- and we did. SO cheesy, but better than a picture of us with Mickey Mouse on our honeymoon, says I. The armor and maquettes of, for example Rivendell, were also terrific, and they had Sauron's enormous suit of armor, which was very intricately engraved (or is it damasked? can't remember the right word for it, but it was very impressive).

After a couple of hours of this it was time to get some lunch. And hit the exhibition gift store. I had planned to hit it hard, but they didn't have as much selection as I had hoped. They did have a TTT edition Legolas figure, which I bought! They're impossible to find in the States, and the woman at the counter said they disappear pretty quickly in NZ too!

We had lunch at a really nice place called Olive near Cuba Street. I had a Nicoise salad and Josh got a bagel with salmon and we discovered really great ginger beer. After lunch Venise and Ross took off to enjoy their free afternoon while we went for a shopping stroll through Cuba Mall. It was a bit of a stroll down Memory Lane for me, as I used to hang out and shop in the thrift stores there when I was 16. I got a couple of shirts and 2 CDs and Josh made a run on the chemists and found more DVM tape for the camcorder.

Later we met Ross and Venise again at Molly Malone's for drinks on the upper balcony overlooking Courtenay Place and Taranaki Street. It was gorgeous weather and we tried out the Monteith's Original and Speight's beers -- yum to both! Afterwards we ate a kebab and caught the 8pm showing of The Two Towers at the Embassy Theatre, where it premiered! Amazing sound and digital screening, as you would expect. There was a false fire alarm right as we got there, but the film went off on schedule, and as we were literally 2 minutes away from the hotel, when it let out at midnight we were able to get right into bed.

We had an early start on Friday to drop off the car and get the ferry.