Wellington prt 1

I had been looking forward to my arrival in Wellington for a few reasons. A big one was seeing my friend Anne Hall again. We worked together at Monster By Mistake's second incarnation and she put up with the worst of my puns, so she has my eternal respect. Speaking of which her name is actually Anne E. Hall and there is not a Woody Allen joke you can make that she hasn't already heard so please don't bother. She works at Weta (the studio that did the effects for Lord of The Rings and King Kong for my non-animator friends) and unfortunately had to work even on the Sunday I arrived as she had some big deadlines ahead of her. Actually as much as she felt bad about this I thought it was perfect, I could explore the city in a unabashedly touristy way and hang out in the evening with someone I knew which was a great change of pace. I love meeting all these people but a dose of the familiar was perfect.
I got into town and tried to get my bag stowed at a local hostel but there bag room was too full so I lugged it just down the road to the Te Papa Museum where I spent the afternoon.
Te Papa is Maori for "Our Place" and they had a free bag check, even for a huge backpackers bag. Of course it had some good Maori stuff and European settler history. I also found out about the Moa. An extinct bird in the same vein as an Ostrich but bigger by about 2 feet. It only disappeared possibly just over a century ago. It was the biggest bird to have ever existed.

I gave Anne a call at the end of the day and she picked me up from out front of the Te Papa. Still conditioned by North America I tried to enter the drivers side of the car thinking it was the passengers side. You would have though Anne already sitting there would have clued me in.
Anyway we zipped off to her apartment which is up a hill. Way up! New Zealand is a country of hills and Valleys but Wellington is pretty sever even by that standard. Anne's place is actually the second floor of a house on a hillside so steep that you can only access the house by a staircase that bridges the upper road with the one that runs along the base of the hill. The walk home will keep you fit and in return you get an amazing view from the living room.

Once my stuff was squared away in the living room we walked down the hill into the downtown core to meet some of her workmates at a Belgian restaurant/bar. It was cool to talk shop again for a little while. When any of the Backpackers find out what I do I have to explain what I do from the most basic point, here I was with colleagues again and that was a nice change of pace too. Anne's friends were great including her roommate Ula who was very relaxed and accommodating about me invading her home. So big props to her.
From there it was a slightly drizzly hike back up the hill and a good night's rest in front of a huge window overlooking the bay.