For some reason the posting on the blog site is not working, so I am posting via Email, not sure how the pictures will turn out.
Well here we are on May 10, the time is certainly flying by. Only a couple of weekends left and we are on our way. We are leaving the flooding here to return to flooding back home. Hopefully we will be able to stay dry in our new house, like we have been able to here.
With time running out Victoria and I decided that we need to make one last trip to Wellington, however this time we did it without the kids. They stayed next door at our friends(and neighbours) house playing Xbox with their kids, so not too much of a hardship for them.
We left Tauranga on Thursday morning at 9:30am and arrived in Wellington at 10:45. Took the shuttle to the hotel which allowed us right into our room as no one had been in it the night before. It is a lovely old property smack in the middle of downtown so we were able to walk everywhere we wanted. The first day was spend walking downtown getting movie tickets and comedy tickets, before heading over to get picked up for the last LOTR tour in New Zealand.
Our first stop was right next door to our hotel, the Embassy theatre where the premier for the third movie was held. We got to see the seats that the cast purchased as fund raising to allow the premier to take place in NZ. Then we spent almost 2 hours touring the locations around wellington before ending up at the Weta studios, a very non-descript set of warehouses in Miramar(suburb of Wellington built up after WWII). Here we were taken to the “Weta Cave”, a small room at the end of the warehouse designed to keep tourists out of the hair of the employees who are hard at work. Interesting video was shown, and a collectables shop which forced me to purchase some items! We also had a chance to stop at the gates to the indoor sets that are being built for the Hobbit, and were used for LOTR. I go at picture of the Green Screen in the parking lot that was used for the last movie, before the security guard at the gate walked out and stood in front of us with his arms crossed looking very stern…too funny.
That night we did more shopping and went to “Source Code” at the theatre, good movie worth the viewing, Directed by David Bowie’s son Duncan Jones (Formerly Zowie Bowie). Friday morning was started off by breakfast at a little café on the corner that server north American style food, including a bottomless cup of coffee for $4.00 (unheard of in NZ). Then off we went to our 90 min couples massage at “The Body Tonic”. This was delightful, but having never had a 90 min massage before it left both of us feeling very tired, so we gulped up a lot of water and headed back to the hotel to shower and rest up before the next bout of shopping.
We spent the rest of Friday bar hopping, including a piano bar where we sang along with the “piano man”, and enjoying a standup act at a near by theatre that reminded us of the Pantages in Winnipeg. The comedian was Greg Proops (Who’s line is it Anyway). He was very funny and we both had sore cheeks after that one. When the show was completed we walked in the rain back down the street to the “Bugy Extreme” location where we strapped ourselves into a chair and were shot up over the rooftops for a spectacular nighttime view of the downtown. That was totally awesome!!
Saturday was the day where all the shopping we did paid off as we made our purchases and hauled them back to the hotel for our shuttle ride home.
Sunday was Mother’s day, with the rainy weather I had made two plans for each weather scenario. Luckily we got to do the outdoor activities which started out with lunch at Breakers in Mt Maunganui, followed by a beach walk which the kids didn’t want to end(they never do.) For the afternoon we headed to the Katikati bird sanctuary about 20km down the highway, where a cockatoo almost took a piece of my finger due to my trusting nature.(we made up eventually and I was able to feed him some food) The we finished the day with dinner at the flying burrito brothers downtown, kids eat for $5 on Sundays J
All in all it was a very lovely 5 days and we all had a good time on Mother’s day as a family laughing and playing tag on the beach.
Well I guess that is all for now, there will be at least one more update before we say fair well to NZ.
Cheers,
Don
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