Pillsbury Press: Museum day in Wellington, NZ

We followed Google Maps from the bottom of the Botanical Garden through some neighborhoods, past an academy (university?), under the cable car bridge, through more neighborhoods until we reached the waterfront area. The forecast was calling for rain, making it the perfect weather to enjoy Te Papa and the Wellington Museum. so I planned a museum day.

One of the wonderful benefits to a trip to New Zealand and Australia is that the national museums are free. As a tourist, I appreciated the opportunity to sample museums and take the financial reasons out of the equation. The real benefit I saw was in the number of families visiting with their small children. What a gift it is to expose the next generation to culture!

Every website talking about a trip to Wellington, NZ emphasizes the importance of visiting Te Papa. Te Papa means treasure box in Maori, and that is the best description of the museum. There are four floors with exhibits ranging from Natural History to Art to History to Environmental and Social History.

Thanks to the free admission policy, we were able to visit Te Papa in smaller chunks, which helped us to absorb what we learned. Our first visit was an hour before closing.

We only covered the section on natural history.

An earthquake house. There was also one in
the Auckland Museum.

The shadows moved when the skeletons
did not.

Relatives of Glinda were everywhere

As we were leaving we met Al, a docent volunteering in the art wing that night. That first visit he showed us a ginormous weaving of seatbelts. Yes, art can be made with a variety of materials. My thoughts went to how much Honey Bunny (Don's mom) would have loved the artwork. Four women prayerfully created this piece through the Mataaho Collective: Te Puni Aroaro. Our pictures just do not do the scale of this piece justice. It will be on display through the end of this year. The four pictures are the same weaving, just from different angles.

There were other weavings, but this was by far the largest and most eye catching. Other weavings were also made from modern materials not thought of as typical art supplies including traffic signs and tarps.

Al told us to take a picture with our flash on.
When we did so, the rainbow appeared

When we returned a couple of days later, we ate lunch in the cafeteria before enjoying the exhibits. All of the food looked delicious. I had a spinach feta quiche, and Don had a steak pie with pumpkin soup. We returned later for a piece of chocolate beet cake.

Al was there again. He told us we just missed hearing someone play the red grand piano, but as it was still out, he showed us some of the details.

Lizards!

Maori carving

I was disappointed to not hear it, but at the same time, since I wasn't expecting to hear it be played, I couldn't be too disappointed. Al said it is rare for this piano to be on display, and even rarer to have someone play it.

We moved on to the Gallipoli exhibit that was created by WETA Workshop in 2015. The temporary exhibit is set to run through 2025. We knew nothing about the New Zealanders who were conscripted to fight in the Gallipoli campaign in World War I, or even the 1981 Mel Gibson movie, but every New Zealand student knows the history of how their relatives were used as cannon fodder, sent into battle without weapons but told to fight anyway. This exhibit features the stories of eight New Zealanders as told through their words, and statues at a 2.5 scale (about 15 feet each). Al told us the first soldier was an artist who lost his right (drawing) arm in the battle. He fell into a depression until someone gave him supplies and encouraged him to learn to draw with his left hand. These details bring the stories to life.

As we left the horrors of war for the five story open atrium we heard music filling the space. Yes, someone was playing the piano that is rarely played. They were playing it as if they studied music their entire life, with much confidence and feeling. I don't remember what was played, just that it the medicine needed to lift us up after reading the horrific stories of a war fought over 100 years ago.

The slice of cake helped, too.

From there we walked along the waterfront to the Wellington Museum, which is also free. Throughout Wellington we saw ads for the Barbie exhibit that closed a couple of days earlier. Another temporary disappointment as we found out the exhibit had just been extended!

Patsy Carlyle is a local woman who has an enormous collection of Barbie Dolls. She is quoted as saying "they say people who collect live longer."

Over 1,600 boxed Barbie dolls.

The local paper ran a story about her collection saying she has one of the largest Barbie collections in New Zealand. One of. The exhibit was overwhelming in a large room with 12 foot ceilings organized on plain white shelves. I cannot imagine what it must look like in her home! I also don't know if this exhibit is her entire collection or if she kept special ones at home.

A highlight for us, though, were the giant Barbie and Ken boxes so we could pose like the dolls. When the movie came out this summer many theaters had similar Barbie boxes. The theater we went to in Pennsylvania did not. Our friends posed in the boxes. We posed by the movie poster instead.

We took turns posing in the gender-appropriate boxes. There was only one other person in the room and she was doing her best to ignore our giggles.

Barbie Jacquie

Ken Don

There was an exhibit on maritime history that included a hologram that felt as if real people were acting in front of us.

A simple interactive exhibit called "This or That" is on an upper floor. A historic object is on display with two different explanations for what it really is. They had round chips you could use to vote for which answer you think is the right one. The information desk in the lobby had a cheat sheet with the correct answers. What a great way to engage people in history! Its only short coming was you had to go down several flights of stairs to ask for the answer to see if you were correct. There should be a faster way.

We left the Wellington Museum and committed to a new suitcase. I know I could have found one cheaper at home, or later in the trip, but this was our second city and we tired of rolling the old suitcase within the first 10 minutes of walking through Newark Airport. Yes, I should have tried it at home, but we had used it just fine on past trips. We took the suitcase to the room, regrouped, and went on a hunt for glow worms.

Ever since learning that glow worms exist, I wanted to find them. I booked a free walking tour that was suppose to end with seeing glow worms. The guide cancelled.

Glow worms are a bioluminescent beetle that is attracted to cool, damp, dark places. There are more of them in warmer weather, but since they exist in caves year-round, we decided to give it a try.

Our expert at the botanical exhibit recommended looking for them along a certain path at dusk, or at least that is where she recently found them. We kept our eyes open and through the drizzly evening we went on a glow worm hunt. A couple of times I thought I saw them, but Don didn't and I couldn't find them again. Unlike lightning bugs (or fireflies) the glow worms seemed to keep their lights on, making them easier to try to capture on a cell phone photo.

Glow worms

More glow worms

We were pleased with our success.

A side note: the weekend after coming home Don was volunteering at our local Full Moon Bike Ride. He thought he saw glow worms. A quick Google search proved they do exist in New Jersey. I see another hunt in our future.

To continue with our attempts at trying a wide variety of food we walked to the Welsh restaurant Don noticed earlier in the trip. Unfortunately their chef does not work on Monday and Tuesdays, and it was Monday night and we were leaving for Christchurch in the morning. Instead we went next door to a generic hamburger place and had an okay burger. Don had a fantastic salad. I should learn to order more salads on vacation.

In the library where eating is encouraged

Our dessert

We then stopped into The Library for dessert. This is a place Don noticed in the guide book he read on the flight. Each room has walls of books. Well, except for the one crowded dark room they were using that night.