Wellington Art Museum, and a Quiet Day at the Hostel

06Jul08
Wellington

After deciding to stay in Plimmerton for a few days instead of moving to a hostel downtown, we headed into Wellington to sightsee. We visited the great Te Papa Museum, that has everything from NZ natural history exhibitions to displays of ladies fashions from the 40's. We only had time to take in less than half the museum on this very crowded Sunday – the natural history exhibit, a rotating exhibit on Scots in New Zealand, and a charming exhibit about Mary-Annette Hay, "The Queen of Wool." She was the enterprising spokeswoman for the NZ wool board and promoted NZ wool garments with elaborate fashion shows in the early 50's. Even her own wedding dress was wool! We skipped a large exhibit featuring the compelling paintings of Rita Angus because we planned to come back another day. (and alas - we never did!)


(wellington waterfront)

After we were sufficiently cross-eyed from the museum we walked around downtown window-shopping and people watching. We walked through the popular Cuba Street arcade and stopped for a coffee and pastry at a real French bakery!

Then back to the hostel for a home-cooked meal.

That evening we met a nice family from West Virginia who were sightseeing in NZ for a couple weeks with their daughter who is studying abroad here. They had just crossed the Cook Strait on the ferry the night before in a tremendous storm. They said the ferry ride was very rough with glassware flying out of the racks and people falling down. The ferry staff even handed out seasick bags to all the passengers... fun! Later on we talked for a long time with the father of the family who runs a handmade natural soap company, about everything from politics to real estate. Very pleasant folks.


07Jul08
Plimmerton

Today was a designated “do-nothing” day :) So we stayed in the hostel all day, mostly camped out on a sofa in front of the fire reading and surfing watching the windy and wet day through the windows.
After browsing the hostel's bookshelf I settled on a wonderful little book of true stories about a woman in Canada who raises orphaned wild owls. I'll definitely have to dig up a copy when I get home! It's called, A Place for Owls, by Katherine McKeever.


(view from the hostel - on a sunny day)

Alas, this evening Justin went out to the car to fetch something and found that someone had tried to break into the van by shoving something into the passenger side lock! Fortunately the would-be thief was pretty inept, and didn't get into the van – although he did manage to jam the lock. Surprising that this happened in such a sleepy little town, but we'd been warned that campervans are popular targets. Our friends Jen and James had theirs broken into in Auckland and the thieves stole all kinds of pointless stuff – clothes, books etc. Oh well, all we could do was to move the van to right outside the hostel and under a streetlamp.