Tag Archives: new zealand

Te Papa

I’m at Te Papa Tongarewa. I really need to rethink the size of the camera I schlep around.

This is a big museum. There are Maori boats and houses, interactive earthquake displays, Captain Cook’s cannon, videos of Roger Muldoon, and a Sheep Cam.

Phar Lap’s skeleton is here, but his hide is in Melbourne.

There’s a moa, too, but it’s fake. I will not be fooled!

And trolls.

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Wellington

All that stuff with the cable car (funicular) was yesterday. Right now I’m sitting at a Starbucks on Lambton Quay in downtown Wellington, drinking a triple latte so they don’t chase me away. I don’t know if they would chase me away, but I would chase me away, so they might, too.

Anyway, there’s free wifi downtown, but that doesn’t extend to my motel, so I have to come down here to use it. I used up all the free wifi at my motel.

And it’s a sunny summer evening, so why not sit outside and write a post about how I’m sitting outside posting about free wifi and my usage thereof?

I really like Wellington. It’s a lot like San Francisco, except that no one urinates in the street.

This morning I had breakfast in the old bank building, then went to the Federal Reserve to see the Glooper. I was too early, so I wandered around in front of the parliament buildings for a while. The Fed curator told me all about the Glooper and gave me a bag of money. I had some time to kill before I went to Weta Cave, so I rode the cable car up and down again and watched the clock in the bank building, then got lunch.

But when I got to the bus stop to go to Weta Cave, I discovered that the bus wouldn’t run late enough to take me back again. Thus thwarted, I walked back to the motel and stumbled upon Dr. Grordbort’s Exceptional Exhibition, which was put together by someone from Weta. Fortuosity.

Now I have to go do laundry before the bus exhaust makes me pass out.

Cable Car at Talavera Station

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Cable Car at Talavera Station

The two cable cars travel in opposite directions on the same track. The track splits at this station and the cars pass each other on the left.

<persnickety>It’s really not a cable car system at all. It’s a funicular railway.</persnickety>