Wellington, Day 2:

Day two in Wellington was forced to take place mostly indoors. The weather had changed extremes from the previous day's blue skys and sunny days and had chosen to rain and blow. Because, genius that I am, I forgot my jacket, I was only too happy to support the group concensus that we sped the day in museums. But first, breakfast. It had been a while since I last has sushi, and Wellington was a large enough town, so we talked to Trang, and she showed us one of the best joints in the city in which to get sushi. And, I'll admit, the sushi was rather amazing; they did something with the rice that made the oversized rolls taste rather good. Unfortunately, I could feel a collective groan from the entire country of Japan while I was eating it:

In case this in unclear in the picture, the center above roll contains teriyaki chicken.

The center middle roll contains tuna scarcely out of can state.

The roll on the bottom right was a "tuna triangle" that combined the amazingly tasty rice with the same tuna as seen in the center bottom roll.

Somehow, it still turned out amazingly tasty.

Anyways, back to the day. So, the weather was crappy, thus we sprinted (i.e. walked quickly) from the sushi joint to the "Museum of Wellington City & Sea," in Maori: Te Waka Huia o Nga Taonga Tuku Iho. It was cute, a 3 story building dealing with the founding of Wellington and assorted naval histories. I saw this on the third (or for non-Americans, the second) story. There was a little explicative plaque to the left of it which I took a picture of, and that I can send to people if'n they're interested.

The coolest thing, however, in this entire museum, was a little room:


It has a little screen that you can't see in the picture that played out a holographic Maori children's story. It was great, sitting on the floor and listening about a little boy who ended up putting the fire in wood, I was back in kindergarten, but this time, with better stories.

In the back of this museum there was a room dedicated to the national zoo. It was . . . interesting. For example, in each of the boxes that one could use for seats, there were plastic feces that you could learn about:

I don't even know what to make of that.

The back wall was magnetic, with little pieces of animals that one could jumble around to make one's own, personal animal. You know what I came up with, just use your imaginations:

Anyway, after playing around with that wall for waaay too long, we left the little museum and went to Te Papa Tongarewa, the main museum for the Cultural Center of the country.


I have to admit, it was a pretty cool museum; you could actually tell that they had invested no small amount of money and time in its creation and upkeep. This is a picture of the main lobby of Te Papa.

This was at the main entrance, overlooking any and all visitors of the museum.

There were exhibits about earthquakes, with interactive games that were supposed to teach you how to prepare well for a possible earthquake. Naturally, I played to lose. They even had an early chinese seismograph. Whenever an earthquake hit the land, there was a little pendulum inside the bell, which struck the back of the dragon's head, causing the large marble inside of the dragon's mouth to drop, telling everybody from which direction the earthquake had come.

In one room, I was privelaged enough to see what an ancient bird would look like if it were attacking a modern ham:


There was also a whalebone graveyard containing the bones of many different whales. It was a rather surreal and somewhat disturbing room.


Needless to say, it was a rather amazing and fully worthwhile museum to see. The only funny thing, for me personally, was that the museum was having an Egyptian exhibit on display. In my life, I've been privelaged enough to have seen the Louvre's amazing egyptology exhibit, I was also fortunate enough to be in L.A. when the King Tutankhamun exhibit was there. So I didn't go inside of their exhibit. Oh, and while the museum was free, the Egpytian exhibit wasn't. But that had nothing to do with my decision.

After the museum closed, we had some amazing take-out butter chicken, and witnessed what St. Patricks day was like in New Zealand. It was just like anywhere else in the world but Ireland. Day long drinking, green wearing, guiness, just like home. The best part was just sitting on a bench on Cuba street, people watching. I was personally just surprised to see that New Zealand has an emo/goth culture. Few things in life are as funny as watching a man who looks like he'd to do nothing so much as find a corner in which to commit seppuku speak in a Kiwi accent. Hilarious.

And I, I shot the Albatros.

And I, I go now to sleep.