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There was me thinking that my education was on a hold this year, and that i wasnt going to have to do any real learning, but alas I was wrong. Why? Well hopefully this blog will highlight why!
Today despite the chance of a lay-in, i set my alarm to be up and out by 9, though i was actually a bit later than that. Dom set out with a whole day planned, only for it to be foiled by the weather. Changes had to be made! New plan, head to the Te Papa first. Now if you don't know, the Te Papa is an amazing museum, and in the list of top things to see in New Zealand. Now i can vouch for that having been, and it really is amazing. As it didnt open until 10am, I was actually one of the first people to arrive, and had to wait for them to take the rope off the front of the esculator, very bizarre. Three very enjoyable hours were then spent exploring the 6floors, and the outside bush-area with caves! Spread throughout what is an incredible building, with lots of different uses of space, are some great exhibitions
ranging from maori culture to volcanoes, art to the changes in the environment. The amount of stuff that I learnt was huge, though like many lectures, the amount i retained was small! My two favourites were the earthquake house, it actually shakes, and the pacific music mixing station, where i created some cool tunes!
Leaving the Te Papa, I made my way along the harbour-front, whilst enjoying my lunch on the go. It shortly started to rain again, so the waterproof was back on and I was forced to make another change in plan, though this actually made sense since it was on the way. I made a stop at the Wellington museum of city and sea. This is a much smaller, more traditional museum, set in one of the old store houses. It had some very good displays and videos on the history of wellingon, and the shipping around. It was cool to be able to see how Wellington has changed through the years, particularly as it is a much newer city than elsewhere in the world. Also had a bit more of a sombre moment as i watched a video about the disaster of a ship called
the Wahine. Not as big a loss of life as some shipping accidents, but still quite sad.
Finally the rain had stopped, and remained this way for the rest of the day. Not too far from the museum is the Beehive and parliament buildings. Yes, one of the buildings is actually called the beehive. How any one is meant to take a building with that name seriously i will never know. They do tours here, but because of time and only having one day there, I gave it a miss. At this point, Dom made an error in judgement. I roughyl new where the cable car station was so didnt bother with my map, however I hadnt banked on there being a lack of side roads to get to it, and eventually found myself in a backlot car park! A quick glimpse at my map and we were back on track. The cable car station itself has been re-done in recent years and looks very swish, tucked back into a small little mall. I rode the cable car all the way to the top (it has two stops midway) where i got some very good views of wellington, though
spoiled slightly by heavy cloud and rain in the distance. Up here I also had the chance to look around the cable car museum and the botanical gardens, yes another one! The museum was very interesting...maybe i should be an engineer? Only kidding!!! The botanical gardens were ok, though by far not the best i have visited on my travels!
Back down at the bottom of the cable car, I visited two art gallerys. The academy gallerys, which were actually back by my second museum, and the Contemporary gallery in the civic centre. The first had an exhibition on based around the vietnam war, with various photos, films, texts etc. Its very easy to forget how bad war can be, both now, and in the past, so it was a bit of an eye opener. It was also interesting since I dont really know much about it other than what i have seen in "forest gump" and "good morning vietnam". The contemporary gallery was...well it was good, but it had some very bizarre stuff even by my artistic tastes! The weirdest was a starnge 20min animation spread across 3 giant screens, with the freakiest music ever!
Art gallerys
down, I had a bit of time left, so i headed back to Te Papa to finish what i had missed out earlier in the day. It was here that i bumped into Kelly, so I headed back with her to the hostel. Spent a bit of time in the room chatting to the other people staying in it. Its funny quite how many people you meet when you travel, and yet how many of them you literally only speak to once. After the usual stuff like tea and internet, I headed out to watch Indiana Jones, since i had been waiting for a week. I figured the city famous for creating Lord of the Rings, would be a good place to go to the cinema. Great cinema! Really nice inside, almost theatre like, and amazingly big and comfy seats. Film was good, a bit too silly though if you ask me! Something about the music though that just gets you excited!!
And that was the end of my day of sheer learning!
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