We spent 5 days in Windy Wellington for Christmas! We stayed in an AirBNB in Te Aro, which is the center of the city. We did a Jewish Christmas, which, if you haven’t heard is: Chinese food and a movie! We saw Star Wars and I’m a good person so I’ll just stop this sentence right there. Wellington has a surprising concentration of Chinese restaurants in the center of town, and we went to one of the movie theatres where Peter Jackson premiered Lord of the Rings, which felt like an excellent place to watch the movie that basically ended my childhood.

Activities:

Te Papa: This museum is massive, and beautifully curated, and FREE!!! My favorite thing in here was the color exhibit, where we saw some of the most interesting pieces I’ve seen in my life. The art in this area played with space, sound, and size in so many ways that I can’t do much more than post the pictures below to describe it. They also had so many pieces that invited people to engage with the art, and your girl loves audience participation. My favorite was a wall of envelopes that held messages written by museum visitors inside. Another favorite was a social media exhibit that invited people to “write” on the “wall” in dry-erase marker (a reference to the ever changing Facebook “wall”).

Mt Victoria: This was a fairly easy hike to a lookout that reached 196 meters (643 feet). It offered a 360-degree view of Wellington, which sits shimmering on the harbor. There’s also a cute place to stop and have a picnic at the top. There are multiple paths leading up to this view, and one of them took us to a film set from Lord of the Rings...

Hobbit’s Hideaway: Many websites told us to pay for the tours that could take us here because it’s “hard to find” but it’s literally the easiest thing to find in the world. Throughout Mt Victoria, there are tons of maps that pointed us straight to “Hobbit’s Hideaway”. In fact, within 20 minutes, we stood and listened to two different tour guides about the filming. This is the scene where Frodo yells “Get off the road!” and the hobbits hide from the ringwraiths. The film creators had to bring a massive tree to make the hobbits look small, and the people who did stunts had some pretty serious injuries. The tree is no longer there, but it’s still fun to be in the places where these movies were filmed!

Lambton Harbour: This is the perfect place to sit with your travel buddy, grab a drink, and chat next to the beautiful harbor. I feel like I’ve said this about all large bodies of water in New Zealand, but again, the water was SO blue and shimmering! There’s also a harbor walk that is really nice to just enjoy the scenery. We even saw an albatross flying over the water!

Cuba Street: This is my favorite kind of “city street” to explore. It’s not enormous and fluorescently lit like Times Square. It’s a few blocks with a lot of cute outlets, restaurants, and specialty stores that is fun to walk through. Our favorite place was (this will be a shocker)…

Wellington Rockshop: I wrote a song in here! I literally just grabbed a guitar, sat in the “acoustic room” and at the end of an hour, I’d written a new song. I have been away from my instruments for a long time, and there’s a lot of pent up writing inside of me! If there’s one thing I miss from home, it’s playing music.

Pegasus Books: This is on Cuba Street and is an excellent book shop! I got a really good dose of inspiration here after reading Neil Gaiman’s University of the Arts commencement speech from 2012. It was a really good reminder that when I’m in doubt, just make art. He talks about having faith in your skills, and fighting the imposter syndrome in both failure and successes. This is so hard to remember when I feel like I’m juggling a lot of responsibilities at home, and it’s helped me gain some perspective on how to proceed with my passions when I get back.

Food:

KC Café and Takeaway: Best Chinese food on the block as endorsed by myself and our AirBNB host. Not glamorous, but five stars for tastiness!

Dragon Chinese Restaurant: This was where we had Christmas dinner, and it was a lovely setting, which also had quality Chinese food.

Hawthorn Lounge: This cocktail bar is incredibly difficult to find. There is a restaurant below the bar. There is a large door to the right of that restaurant. There is NO sign at all, but we walked in the door, and walked through another door, and walked up a dark stairwell (I know, I know, this is how you die in a foreign country, but it was a cool setting, right??) and then you reach the very classy Hawthorn Lounge. The atmosphere is vibrant, but, warning, the drinks are expensive!

Le Samourai coffee: AKA the idea I’ve always had for a restaurant that has finally come to fruition. It’s coffee (GOOD coffee) combined with a wine and cheese bar. All of my favorite things in one place! They even have chocolate desserts! I also learned what a “Flat White” is: espresso + water + hot milk that’s not too foamy.

Kaffee Eis: This store has a few locations in Wellington that offer coffee and gelato. It was really tasty, and we got our favorite New Zealand flavors: Feijoa and passionfruit! Feijoa is a rare fruit in New Zealand and Australia that tastes kind of like a lime-y kiwi passionfruit mixture.

St. John’s Bar and Restaurant: This is the restaurant closest to the Lambton Harbour and offers the perfect food/wine combination for a gorgeous outdoors hangout with your travel buddy. You can eat at the restaurant or out on the lawn chairs in the grass, where a DJ plays some bumping tunes in the background.

Travel Tips and Fun Facts:

Okay, so now you know Jewish Christmas is eating Chinese food and going to a movie, but did you know...

Japanese Christmas is eating KFC.

Mexican Thanksgiving is eating KFC or Pollo Loco.

...Culture is so cool, right??

Washing/Drying clothes: Everyone uses a washer, but almost no one uses a dryer (even if they own one). Everyone here uses a line and pegs to dry their clothes. Very old school, but I think this may have a lot to do with the culture of being as green as possible and conserving the environment.

Garbage/Recycling/Compost: Everyone we met here does all three. Super impressed with the commitment to taking care of the planet!

Getting Around: Before we arrived in New Zealand, we mostly received advice to rent a campervan. A lot of tourists travel this way, and I can see why it would be so convenient. You can stay in more remote areas and see some natural wonders of New Zealand without paying for accommodation... but I like beds. So we used the Intercity bus company and traveled between AirBNBs. Overall, this was a good way to travel on a budget. The buses were clean and pretty much always on time. The only difficult thing about it was that we had to choose a route that Intercity buses run on. So, for example, there is a main route that goes North to South. There are offshoots that goes East and West, but sometimes you have to backtrack pretty far to go to those locations, rather than just drive an hour east or west from where you are. We were okay with this because there is just so much to see in the North Island that you can’t do it all in 3 weeks (well, maybe if we had more money, we could). That being said, we did miss the Waitomo Glowworm Caves which is a big attraction to the island.

And that’s it for our adventures in New Zealand! We plan to come back someday for a tour of the South Island. Join me for the next phase of our Round The World trip in Australia!

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