Day 13
We had no official plans today except staying at our favorite hostel, Tombstone, that night. The world was our oyster! We walked around Nelson and saw pointer baby again! It was really magical and a Kiwi told Josh "Bless you", which NEVER happens. They treat sneezing like coughing here, so I have had to restrain my automatic "bless yous". I always feel rude. After visiting the ISite, to my GREAT delight, we decided to go the the WOW museum, which is the World Of Wearableart Museum. Project Runway is one of my favorite shows, so I was in imagination heaven! It was a whole museum of strange pieces made out of unconventional materials. The WOW shows have been going on in Wellington for the last month or so, but tickets have been sold out forever, so I was really excited to get to see some of the art up close. The museum also had classic cars, so I guess they are trying to appeal to everyone. "Ok honey, we can go to WOW. You go look at the dresses and I'll look at the cars. Meet back in an hour?" The cars did not really appeal to me, but they were there, so I looked around and took pictures.
WOW! We are at WOW!
Hippie van
Austin Powers "Shaguar" Fancy!
We decided to get come takeaway pizza and eat it at the beach because it was a nice day. We played in the water, took pictures, and almost got our pizza eaten by seagulls on various occasions.
What a gem! This is my fellow travel mates favorite picture of me. I was literally distracted by a bird. Classic.
Beach and sunshine. Good day!
We headed to Picton on the scenic route and came to Tombstone. We went to the park that we had seen two weeks before and played to our hearts content. I think I played at more playgrounds on this trip than I have since elementary school, but they are irresistibly cool over here. There was a huge pirate ship and swings and other tricky things. We made a delicious dinner and did more hot tubing.
Huggin' Donald at the park
Sweet pirate ship
Titanic reenactment... 'eryday
Day 14
It was an early morning because we were taking the ferry over to Wellington. It was really rainy and gross so it was nice that we were tired and not wanting to take pictures outside like 2 weeks before (What did I tell ya? Perfect weather for each occasion). Jen and Josh decided to nap, so Marian and I went into the lounge area to play cards. We ended up meeting 3 rugby players from the US who were here for the World Cup. We talked about culture differences, all the different things we had done in our travels, and all of the strange rugby rituals. I have decided that I don't even want to play rugby because of my love of peace, avoidance conflict style, and low pain tolerance. I do, however, want to watch rugby when I get to states and I would not mind marrying a rugby player if he was nice and had all of his teeth. I know, I am SO picky!
We finally arrived in Wellington and had a lot of trouble navigating. The city was abuzz with the World Cup starting in a few days and it was a lot bigger than any of the village towns we had been driving through. We eventually found parking, wandered around, and got food. We then got picked up by our Lord of the Rings tour guide!! This was Marian's chosen activity, but we were all really excited about it.
We went to Victoria Forest, just outside of Wellington, where they filmed a few of the scenes. Our tour guide would play us the scenes on his laptop and then show up where it actually happened. Pretty cool! We also got to recreate some iconic scenes in the places where they were filmed, which was WAY cool! We then went to Weta Cave (Studios) where they made all of the set and are now making the sets for (and filming) the Hobbit.
Recreating one of the deleted scenes. I was Sam and Jen was Frodo
Recreating the "pile" scene after the farmer chases the hobbits and they fall down the hills. Marian=Frodo, Jen=Pippin, Josh=Merry, and I am Sam
The classic scene with the dark rider. This is the actual location and the big root was just a prop, so sad.
"creating" the dark rider. So awkward!
But it worked well
Me at the Weta museum with my BFF. This is the mold of the actual man that played the Lurtz. He was a big dude! Also, when I took this picture, this strange ponytailed man told me I did not look scary or cool at all! Not cool Weta Cave guy!
Gollum loved us
Great travel companions
Finally, after 14 days of intense travel, it was time to come home to Palmy. This trip was really one of the most amazing experiences of my life. I would not trade those two weeks for anything. I saw some of the most beautiful sights in the world, made some life long friends, created some amazing memories, and grew as a person. I was an adult for two weeks! I planned my life and did exactly what I wanted to. All of the "post-college" stuff does not seem so scary now.
Us with Leroy, our great steed that took us from Queenstown to Palmy. Miss ya, kiddo!
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