So my flight yesterday from Christchurch to Wellington went very smoothly (except for a bit of turbulence on the way in) and Phillipe picked me up with no problem. He then showed me around Miramar, the suburb around the airport, and coincidentally the place where Weta Workshops is. I went to the Weta Cave (the Weta Workshop store/mini museum), snapped some pics and went inside to ask about LOTR tours. They gave me a brochure for this one tour, but it later turned out the guy couldn't do a tour this weekend, so I ended up with another tour today.
Anyways, after that we went around Wellington, seeing a lot of the various suburbs and neighborhoods (and Peter Jackson's house!) and getting sandwiches at Subway (I had the Roast Lamb, which I think is a NZ exclusive). Then we went back home where I met Phillipe's wife Sandra. We chatted, I planned my LOTR tour for today,a nd in the evening Phillipe and I went out for burgers. On the way we went up to Mount Victoria, where I took a lot of pictures. The burgers we go were big and tasty, and I quite liked them. Then Phillipe, Sandra, and I watched "The Kite Runner," although I fell asleep in the middle of it.
Todasy I got up bright and early in order to get to my tour. Phillipe was more than kind to drive me into central Wellington. It was a nice tour, in a van that went around the Wellington area. Besides outr guide, we had an English girl, two Australian women, a Japanese woman, a German girl, a Scottish man, another American guy, and me. We went to Mt. Victoria (Outer Shire, "Shortcut to Mushrooms," "Get off the road," Dunharrow, Woodelves viewing point, and the race to the ferry), the cafe where the cast often went to eat (where I got an afghan, a kind of cookie I'd never seen before), the Weta Cave (where i bought a little plastic weta and a comic that Weta designed, and saw a film on Weta's history and what they do), the Hutt River (one of several rivers to stand in for the Anduin), a regional park which I forget the name of (Rivendell), and Harcourt Park (Isengard gardens, or "The Isengardens," as our guide called them). There were a couple of other places we drove past but didn't get out of the van for too (for instance the quarry where Helm's Deep was). Except for the fact that my camera ran out of power around Rivendell, and i forgot to bring my batteries on the tour (I left them at Phillipe's house), it was an excellent tour.
So tomorrow I plan to meander about central Wellington, seeing the national museum and the Beehive (the house of Parliament), as well as hopefully some other cool stuff. I'll report back then.
Sincerely,
David
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