New Zealand Holiday 2014, March 11 (Papa Crazy)

The first stop of the day was the Te Papa Museum, which is supposed to be the biggest and best in New Zealand. It was free too, so there was no risk of another aquarium disaster. The exhibits we visited were:

• Awesome Forces - It didn't quite qualify as awesome, but it had some decent displays about earthquakes and land formations
• Mountains To Sea - Not very good, just stuff about birds and sea life
• Colossal Squid - It wasn't as big as I thought it would be, and it was a bit banged up. There was also a really terrible 3D squid movie
• Bush City - More like crap city, it was just some outdoor area with some plants
• Blood Earth Fire - Just about how the forest landscape of New Zealand has changed over time
• My Place - Some really good short documentaries about people who live in different parts of New Zealand, best part of the museum
• Mana Whenua - Some boats and stuff
• Te Marae - Some sort of Maori rooms and huts, they were pretty well built and interesting to look at
• Slice Of Heaven - Lots of 20th century memorabilia and stuff, also very good
• Pharlap Skeleton - Strangely just tucked away in a corner where noone was visiting

The museum took nearly three hours to look through in total, although Jason is usually lagging behind a bit so I may have done it closer to two on my own.

Te Papa, I think it means "The Museum".

Bush City, I think it means "waste of time".

A plane and big sticks.

We're going to need a bigger boat.

A big empty room, at least it looked nice.

So that's where that came from!

Pharlap skeleton, the rest is in the mail.

Retro games and toys, this museum has everything.

Out on the roof at Te Papa still.

Had lunch at a place called Kapai which claims to be "the authentic kiwi kebab", as opposed to the fifty other Turkish kebab stores I've already seen perhaps. It was quite good and not too expensive as well, 8 out of 10. I also got another energy drink, this time a limited edition Kaboom V energy drink. It's not nearly as good as the Graphite V and had a slight citrus taste, 6 out of 10.

10 out of 10 for effort.

The next stop was going to be The Cricket Museum, a short walk away down at the Basin Reserve, but when I got there I found out it was only open Saturday to Monday. I'm not sure I missed out on a lot because I couldn't find out any information about it on the internet, but I was keen to read about the greats of NZ cricket like Daniel Vettori!

So that's where that came from!

A bit small for international cricket.

So at least that meant we were back on schedule for the day, and the next destination was a hike up Mount Victoria that overlooks Wellington from the east (yes, another Mount Victoria). On the way to the base of the hill I managed to find and inspect the weird bus tunnel, but sadly pedestrians and cyclists are not allowed to use it. I turned on the Garmin GPS for the hike up Mount Victoria, but was a little disappointed when it was all over in about one kilometre and less than fifteen minutes - it looks a lot bigger from downtown. After checking out the sights from the top (Wellington doesn't have as much scenery as Auckland I would say) it was back down the other side of the mountain, which was a little bit longer and steeper, to Oriental Bay.

The old bus tunnel.

Me and the other big city.

Oriental Bay.

After getting back to the downtown area I went first all the way down Taranaki Street, which does not have many good shops or anything to see, and then back up Cuba Street which runs parallel to it. In Cuba Street I came across a cool comic book store called "Graphic", the highlight being a graphic novel series being produced by Marvel for Stephen King's "The Stand". However they only had volume five and it cost like $50.

Cuba Street.

Cuba Street leads back into Lambton Quay where I passed the Plimmer Steps landmark, which was nothing more than some steps in between a couple of buildings. I continued my search for magnets but so far have come up empty, before ending up back at the Parliament district again, where they have the weird looking Beehive and the famous "largest wooden building in the southern hemisphere" - it's a whole four floors tall!

Plimmer Steps, is Plimmer the man or the dog?

A building made out of wood, who'd have thought of that.

The beehive and another, more practical Parliament building.

No idea what these are meant to be.

After another big day of walking it was dinner time at Arizona Bar. I finally got to order some nachos, although they weren't your normal kind of nachos, you had to construct them yourself! It was quite disappointing that there was hardly any cheese in the small pot, it was mostly just some kind of large beans. I'd only give it a 6 out of 10.

Nachos kit.

After dinner Jason convinced me that it would be a good idea to go for a jog along Lambton Harbour down to Oriental Bay. I was feeling reasonable at the start and the scenery was quite nice, but I was starting to regret the decision at the end of the eight kilometre round trip as my knees were both quite a bit worse off.