1 Oct: Urbanity Continues

On this day in Wellington we:

• Had breakfast in a cafe overlooking the waterfront;
• Strolled the waterfront looking at architecture and art;
• Visited Te Papa, the big National Museum;
• Walked around the shopping areas;
• Had supper in a nice restaurant, and
• Attended a play.

The Flat White

A "flat white" is what you order in a New Zealand espresso place in order to get what we would call a Cappuccino. It's a lovely espresso drink.

It seems a "cappuccino" here has more foam and a sprinkle of cinnamon. Whatever. The flat white is perfect. If you want a big mug of black coffee you order, guess what: a Long Black. There is a locally-written play, a bawdy comedy about New Zealanders on holiday, playing now, which is entitled "Four Flat Whites in Italy." (That's not the play we went to see.)

On The Waterfront

Wellington has tried hard to integrate its scenic waterfront with the city using architecture, parks, and statuary. Here are a few pics we shot on this sunny morning (as brother-in-law Bill says, after the rain comes the big puffy white clouds).

Overview, from top of Te Papa museum.

Breakfast overlooking the yacht harbor.

The City-to-the-Sea bridge is an art piece and overpass connecting the city plaza with the harbor.

Cafés, art, recreation are the themes.

Note the "fern globe" suspended in mid-air, and the polka-dot building.

Te Papa

New Zealand spent a bundle on this national statement that tries very hard to be a friendly, accessible, detailed look at both human and natural history. It's an impressive building with lots of big dramatic spaces. For actual information density we felt we learned more at the Kauri Museum (see 21 Sept) and the Tawhiti Museum (28 Sept).

Cameras are allowed, but it's very dark inside and we didn't get any pics worth showing.

Street Life

Wellington's shopping streets are a little bit raffish but busy with lots of people of all ages.

This is the Bucket Fountain, kinetic sculpture.

The city buses are cute cute cute!

Deathly Drama

Good Night—The End is a surrealistic black comedy by local playwright Jo Randerson. The theater is just a block from our door, so we walked by it our first day and saw the box office was open and said, why not? and bought tickets.

The play is set in the sleazy employee break room at the place where the Grim Reaper works. A lot of the jokes are work-related jokes: why doesn't anyone ever wash out their own coffee cups; who's been stealing my snack food from the fridge. We missed a lot of the jokes because the actors were speaking fast New Zealandish accents, except for the one who played the manager and spoke only Italian (we guess, as a reference to Dante?). This guy was (a) incredibly handsome and (b) named Aaron Cortesi!

So basically it is about three people in black robes with scythes sitting around the break room trying to plan their part in the employee Christmas party... do look at the slide show on the web page linked above. Marian said afterward, "That Was the Weirdest Thing I Ever Saw".