I’ve passed a few houses that have been for sale, the more high-end ones have large posters with a few pictures and details about the house, but none of them list the asking price which I thought was really interesting, I wonder why. I’ll have to check in the windows of the real estate offices to see if the asking price is listed on the house flyers.
I had been planning to hike at Kaitoke Regional Park today, but I woke up at 5 o’clock to the tui’s loudly calling outside my window. Deciding it was way too early to get up, I fell back asleep until 730 at which point I decided I was too tired for a 6+ hour hike. It’s nice to have the option of pushing myself physically, mentally or emotionally or taking it easy.
I got myself ready to head out, having decided to check out a couple museums and take a nice long walk when I found out that Mary and Owen have a family friend from Germany staying for a couple of days. She arrived last night after I was in bed so I didn’t meet her until this morning. She’s taking a gap year between high school and college and came to New Zealand for awhile. She had spent a couple of weeks further up the North Island and now she’s headed down to the South Island for a couple of months, which I think is a great plan. The South Island is a lot less populated and the natural beauty there is just mind blowing. I showed her how to get to town through Central Park and then headed to the Katherine Mansfield House.
Katherine Mansfield was a famous New Zealand author from the early 20th century. I had no idea that she had such a daring and unconventional life, especially for a woman from her era. She died quite young, but produced an amazing amount of work in her short life. I can see why she left New Zealand for the UK and Europe, she came from a quite well-to-do family that did not approve of her being a writer, despite the fact that she showed her talent at a very young age. The house was filled with overstuffed furniture and loads of decorative objects, much of it Asian inspired as that was the trend at the time. It was really only up in the children’s nursery that it felt like a place where you could relax.
After that, I headed to the Wellington Museum and was very pleasantly surprised at this informative and quirky museum. It had lots of information and wonderful exhibits about Wellington history, including a re-creation of the harbor at the end of the 19th century complete with a fake rat running across a sail! There was also an amusing promotional film from the 50s, though I think my favorite part was the Attic on the top floor of the museum which contained a myriad of random objects related to Wellington. It was a real cross section of Wellington life over the years, from zoo animals to transportation systems, life during World War II to sports stars, local personalities to architecture, even a beautiful work of art made from human hair! Basically anything you could think of was there, like the attic of an old house.
There was also an exhibit and movie about the Wahine disaster, which occurred in 1968 when one of the Interislander ferries ran aground during the worst storm in Wellington history and 51 people died. It was a heart wrenching movie, especially since they showed photos of people on the ship with life jackets on as they waited to be rescued, then photos afterwards of lifeboats being hauled in and of some of the bodies of those who didn’t make it. Two photos in particular really got me. The first was of a young woman with her toddler on her lap, both in life jackets waiting on the ferry. Later in the film was another photo of them after they had been pulled to safety from a life boat. I cried with relief seeing that they were ok. Unfortunately, many others weren’t. What a sad day in Wellington’s history.
It was graduation day for Victoria University, as I walked through the city I saw several graduates in their caps and gowns with their families. They all looked very happy and excited. I’m also enjoying the quirky signs and artwork around the city.
On the way home I stopped at a café and bar called Counter Culture, where besides getting food and drinks, you can also play one of their hundreds of boardgames! There were several boisterous groups playing, definitely one of the happiest places I have been to. On the way to the bus stop, I noticed a place called Yogallery and was intrigued by the name soI went to investigate . Turns out it’s a yoga studio owned by a woman whose husband is an artist. Most of his artwork is made out of woven strips of rubber to create 3-D style pictures – very cool!
Tonight was Mary‘s turn to host her monthly book club that has been together for over 25 years! It’s not your standard book club where everybody reads the same book every month and then they get together to discuss, it’s more like a book lending library, where everybody contributes a couple of books at the start of each year then they all choose ones to read and talk about what they liked about the books that they read. After a while everybody has pretty much read most of the books and they each get to act as book reviewer for the others.
I am trying to see different New Zealand movies while I’m here, so tonight I watched Bellbird, a touching film about a dairy farmer getting through the first year after his wife’s death and his relationships with the people around him. It was a very sweet movie, and very much a rural kiwi story.
The moon was gorgeous tonight! View is from my deck.
