New Zealand Road Trip: A Weekend in Wellington
After our rainy and windy drive through Taranaki, we spent the night in a field near Waiinu beach and woke up to this:
The wind was on the waves, so we started to make our three hour drive down to Wellington. On the way in, Bryan had to stop and buy a new laptop, and I learned that driving and parking the van in the big city is no fun!
Luckily, we found a big parking lot for freedom camping and there were a few spots still open. We left the van and opted for Ubering (or DiDi-ing) around the city for the weekend.
We hiked up Mt. Victoria and hit some Lord of the Rings filming photo opps along the way.
I learned that Wellington is very windy! The city gets 175 days a year of over 60 knot winds. We could definitely feel it as we walked up to the summit of Mt. Victoria. The views were beautiful, though!
Burger joints are popular in New Zealand. We tried Burger Liquor for dinner and really liked it. Their burgers, curly fries, beer, and milkshakes met our refined American standards.
Our parking lot overnight stay was just fine. And in the morning we headed to a delicious brunch at Neo Cafe & Eatery, then to the National Museum of New Zealand. I originally wanted to go because I thought it was free, but when we got there we found out it’s only free for New Zealand residents. However, the $35 NZD (was about $17 USD at the time) was really worth it. It’s a very well-done museum, and there was so much to see and discover!
Later that day, we visited Weta Workshop, another of the LOTR stops on our trip. This is where they make many of the props and costumes for the LOTR and Hobbit movies, plus so many other movies with magical props and designs! It was really neat to learn how the actors get into character and see (and touch!) some of original movie props.
We probably would’ve stayed another night because the drive to get to Wellington is quite long, but we had big plans for the next day. I’ll tell you about that next time. But for now, I’ll leave you with some late night van ramen:
