48 Hours in Wellington, New Zealand’s Capital City

WOW literally.
Art, culture, nature, scenery.
Its like Wellington has everything you could want in a city… including 4 seasons in one day!

I spent three days there (since I’m a bad Kiwi and have never been to the capital city), but for the purpose of this post, I’ll just tell you about the first two days. Day 3 was Zealandia which deserves a post to itself!

Prior to Day 1

Land in Wellington Airport only to be greeted by these giant birds with Gandalf sitting high above — doesn’t seem you can ever get away from Lord of the Rings in New Zealand.

Day 1

Cafe culture

Cuba Street is where you head to for cafes in all shapes and forms. My friend and I sampled many during out stay, Day one was a spot called Felix.

Walking along the waterfront

I love a good walk, especially when it’s near water. The walk towards and past Oriental Bay is lovely, you have nice wide paths and lovely well-maintained old buildings dotted amongst the new modern ones. There’s the odd bit of street art mixed in too!

Being a little over ambitious, we also attempted the walk up to Mt. Victoria. Sadly we got about 3/4 of the way and opted to turn back as we were catching up with a few people for lunch at Olive (date and apple scones were amazing).

Cable Car and Botanical Gardens

Given the sun was in full swing we headed up to the cable car and for a bargain of only $7.50 we got a return ticket in the nifty red cable car heading up the hill.

The views at the top were pretty incredible. Its like you can almost see all of Wellington City and the harbour from up there!

Possibly could have skipped the return ticket, because we basically walked all around the Botanical Gardens and down to street level, then back up the hill to catch the cable car back down. Still, it meant I got an extra few photos in, so that was good!

Evening highlight: WOW – World of Wearable Art Show

This was the main reason for visiting Wellington at this time of year, to see the incredible wearable art from all around the world in an incredible dancing, musical theatrical show as TSB Arena.

Having visited Nelson’s Wearable Art museum earlier this year, it was fantastic to see the show first hand and all the new outfits on display. So many of them are made from recycled objects and just a couple of different types of items. It’s amazing what some brilliant creative minds can produce.

Sadly I wasn’t allowed to take photographs during the show, but can highly recommend a Google of ‘World of Wearable Art Show + Wellington’.

Day 2

Brunch

Today’s brunch was with a blogger friend I met in London. We headed to Loretta where I had delightful waffles!

Tour of the Beehive and Parliament

Bidding farewell to my good friend and travel buddy I wandered over to the Beehive – a unique building that is part of our national government. I did the tourist thing and took a tour to see inside properly. It was pretty cool seeing where all the politicians have their big meetings. The library was beautiful too — set up like an old church.

If you’d like to organise a free tour, you can pop into the visitor centre or check out their website: https://www.parliament.nz/en/visit-and-learn/visit/guided-tours/

Te Papa and the Gallipoli Exhibition

If there is one museum to go to in New Zealand it has to be Te Papa. It’s known for it’s incredible exhibitions to keep the entire family interested. The Gallipoli exhibition was one of these. Developed by Weta Workshop (yes think Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit) it had incredible interactive pieces throughout, large giant-sized replicas of people involved at Gallipoli and a LOT of information. It was set up like a movie set almost, which helped make it a bit less sad than it may have otherwise been.

Having visited Gallipoli, Turkey myself a few years ago it was great to see the history at the exhibition and be able to connect it to the places I’d literally walked amongst.

If you’d like to find out a bit more check out the exhibition website: http://www.gallipoli.tepapa.govt.nz/

Street Food at the Night Markets

Having never been one to enjoy eating in restaurants alone, I managed to stumble across a street food area at the Night Markets in Lower Cuba Street. Dinner solved!

That was my 48 hour guide to Wellington, stay tuned for the coming posts about Zealandia and the Art in and around Wellington!