Wellington — 5 February 2001

Room service delivered a delicious breakfast (the freshest fruit imaginable), which we ate while watching some quality American television — ESPN! (At several points in our journey, we came in contact with American cable, one of several examples of American pop culture's reach. Pop music is another example — Eminem is huge, and we heard Macy Gray and the Black-Eyed Peas.) All but two of the ice hockey games televised here were (who guessed?) Penguins games — it's as if we didn't leave Pittsburgh! (One of the two non-Penguin games was the NHL All-Star Game, so we had a healthy dose of Mario Fever down under.) A little touch of home in New Zealand's capitol city.

Before heading off for the day's adventures, we checked out of our room at the Shepherd's Arms and took our bags down the road to the Tinakori Lodge. Then we walked up the road for some pictures at the Prime Minister's house, then up a few more blocks to the entrance of Wellington's massive botanical gardens. Wow! There are cities smaller than these gardens, which offer both a variety of plants from around the nation and world and some terrific views of downtown Wellington and the harbor. After walking to the top of the hilly gardens, we rode the cable car down into the city to Lambton Quay. I replaced my broken watch with a new one, then we took a quick walk along the "beach" (as the girl in the watch shop said, "it's weenie").

In the early afternoon, we headed back to Tinakori Lodge to check in. Then we returned to the botanical gardens, went back down the cable car and walked to Te Papa, the national museum. Inside Te Papa, we lunched at Icon (more fantastic fish). By this point (3pm), we were a bit tuckered out and only had the energy to take in a few of the exhibits. The building is very new — perhaps 3 years old — and the exhibits are excellent. One of our favorites was Dr. Frankenstein's Haunted Bird Hatcher, an interactive exhibit where we could build a bird from disparate parts of several species. We built a pretty strange bird, but when you put a penguin's head on a large bird's body, it's going to look peculiar. We also loved all of the Maori art, featured prominently throughout the museum.

After spending the late afternoon wandering through the museum, we headed off to supper. We ate at the Coyote Cafe, a southwestern-themed bar with fusion cuisine. I had tasty curry chicken and Jen ate lamb salad with beet root. Once again, we were asked where we were from (Canada or America), this time from our server. As it turned out, she wasn't from New Zealand, but Vancouver! (Jen: She knew we were from N. Am. when Carl ordered Ice Tea, which has not caught on in NZ yet.) Once again, Jen was curious about the music (dub), and (once again) it turned out to be from a compilation CD. This time, though, the bartender had the CD case! Jen had a pleasant conversation with several of the guys at the bar about dub.

After our meal, I stopped into a cybercafe (checking to see if Akron had given me word about the job — no word yet) while Jen took a look around and ended up walking to the edge of Cuba Mall where she was asked for directions by two Kiwi girls. (They were very amused that they had asked a foreigner for directions.) Jen offered the services of our trusty Rough Guide and they were able to find their way after a quick look at the guide's map of Wellington. After we met up, we wandered through the city center and around the government buildings (including the very new Beehive). From there, we discovered we were an extremely short walk from Tinakori Lodge!