Trip to Wellington the Capital of New Zealand

Wellington is the southernmost capital in the whole world. It is located at the southern tip of New Zealand's North Island. It is the third most populous city in New Zealand, with about 200,000 residents in the city itself and 480,000 including all the towns and settlements around it. Wellington is also considered an especially cultural city with an abundance of museums, galleries, theaters, festivals, and cultural events. It is also an especially culinary city: it has more cafes, bars, and restaurants per capita than New York! It is known for its cafe culture.

 

 

Wellington is known as a city with strong winds most days of the year, which gave it the nickname "Windy Wellington".

 

 

 

 

Wellington is also known for its developed film industry. The "Lord of the Rings" trilogy, King Kong, and even Avatar originated at Weta Workshops in Wellington. This contributed to another nickname for the city: "Wellywood".

Wellington is a beautiful city, abounding with spectacular lookout points. Its center is compact and flat and fun to explore on foot, while most of the residential houses are located on hills and mountains overlooking a wonderful view of the bay, the harbor, and the city center.
Ferries to Picton, on the South Island, depart from Wellington. In addition, it has an international airport, so it is often used as an important transit point in New Zealand between the two islands.

♦ Tours in Wellington

♦ Guided tours from the Viator site adapted for cruise ship passengers:

♦ For travelers staying at a hotel in Wellington, the following tours are recommended:

♦ A tour to explore the city's attractions, an electric bike tour, and a coastal safari tour:

 

It is recommended to start your visit to the city at its successful visitors center:
 Wellington i-SITE Visitor Centre, located at the Civic Square in the heart of the city, near the promenade along the bay, within walking distance of most of its attractions.

Afterward, you should go up the red Wellington Cable Car for a wonderful view of the mountainous city. The cable car (it is recommended to buy a one-way ticket) reaches the city's beautiful botanical gardens, Wellington Botanic Garden, which are fun to walk through on foot, and while doing so, descend from the mountain back to the city center. The view from every direction is charming!

 

In the upper part of the gardens, there is a planetarium called Carter Observatory where impressive digital shows of celestial bodies are held. The gardens are diverse, with vegetation from different regions of the world, including cacti and, of course, a typical fern forest, ponds with ducks, and plenty of wonderful play areas for children.

 

In the lower part, there is an impressive rose garden, not far from which is a small Jewish cemetery with headstones in the Holy Tongue.

 

From the gardens, it is worth continuing on foot to visit the New Zealand Parliament building, with its unique structure, where free guided tours are held every hour, on the hour. The parliament is built of an old, classic part and a new, modern part known as the "Beehive", on which opinions are divided, and there were many debates from the moment of its planning until today.

 

Nearby is the impressive Governor's House.

Another building that can be visited independently is the Supreme Court, which also has a unique structure; inside a square (and unimpressive) building, there is a huge metallic sphere containing the courtroom.

 

Wellington's city library, the Wellington City Library, is also an impressive building that is recommended to visit. Entry is free, and the atmosphere in the place is extremely pleasant. The library has more than 625,000 books, 200,000 magazines, and 96,000 CDs.

The most famous site in the city is the museum of New Zealand, "Te Papa Museum": Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa. This is one of the largest and most important museums in New Zealand with interactive displays on topics of Maori culture, immigration to New Zealand, flora and fauna, geothermal phenomena, and more. It spans five floors with 36,000 square meters of exhibits. Admission to the museum is free! Paid guided tours are held daily.

After the visit to the museum, you should stretch your legs by taking a walk from the museum along the wharf to the harbor, among parks, restaurants, shops, beautiful buildings, and statues.

 

For zoo lovers, there are two successful sites to visit: The first is the Wellington Zoo, considered the oldest zoo in New Zealand and the best small zoo in the world.

It is recommended to join one of the unique activities it offers for an additional fee, such as: a face-to-face meeting with a cheetah, lions, giraffes, red pandas (my favorite!), or meerkats (or as most of us know it: Timon from The Lion King). This is an intimate meeting in small groups with the animals in their natural habitat where you can pet, feed, and learn a lot about the animal you visited. An amazing but quite expensive experience.

 

 

The second is the wildlife sanctuary "Zealandia". This is a sanctuary that serves as the home of some of the rarest and most amazing animals in New Zealand, like the Tuatara lizard, considered a remnant from the dinosaur era, the Kaka forest parrot, and many other species of birds and reptiles, as well as impressive vegetation.

 

 

 

The sanctuary is located in Sanctuary Valley, which offers many trails where you can walk among natural vegetation and find interesting animals and birds.

 

It is amazing to think that just a few minutes' drive from the bustling and lively city center, there is a nature gem, a paradise for birds, reptiles, and trees, many species of animals that have almost gone extinct in New Zealand.
In the sanctuary, they are trying to fix what humans destroyed in the last 800 years, since arriving in New Zealand. The sanctuary is the opposite of a zoo – here there are no animals in cages. The birds fly over your heads, the special trees surround you, and therefore it is highly recommended to join a guided tour. The tour departs 3 times a day and lasts two hours. A guide (a volunteer at the place) will show you different species of reptiles and insects, trees, birds, ducks, and more. A very special sanctuary in the wonderful air of nature, in the heart of a bustling city.

 

 

Cinema and science fiction fans will be happy to visit "The Weta Cave", located in a suburb of Wellington called Miramar, about a 20-minute drive from the city center along the coastline. The place has a mini-museum with some of the company's famous characters from movies, as well as a movie telling about the creativity and vision in filming science fiction movies and the working methods. Among the company's famous movies: the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy, The Hobbit, Avatar, and King Kong.

On the site: https://www.wetafx.co.nz/features information about many other movies that the WETA company participated in producing.

In order to get to know the city, its history, and its interesting sites better, it is recommended to join a two-hour walking tour of the city by the company Walk Wellington. The successful and in-depth tour departs from the visitors center.
For those who are without a car in Wellington and are interested in visiting in a short period of time with a comprehensive and fascinating trip to its central tourist sites, it is recommended to join a tour by the company Hammonds Scenic Tours, which has two-and-a-half-hour tours twice a day, including the best sites of the city, including a drive along the coastline and an impressive view of the city and the bay from the summit of Mount Victoria. The company also has full-day tours to tourist sites outside the city, tours following "Lord of the Rings" filming sites, and a winery tour for wine tasting.
The company Wellington Rover Tours also has successful three-and-a-half-hour tours in the city center held twice a day, including successful lookout points, as well as half-day or full-day tours following the Lord of the Rings trilogy and nature tours following the seals on the rocky southern coast near the city.

For lovers of nature, scenery, and especially: animals in nature, it is highly recommended to join a fascinating jeep trip to the seal colony a short drive from the city, "Seal Coast Safari". The three-hour tour is held twice a day and includes a drive on a scenic route to a modern wind farm (the largest in New Zealand), with a stop for stunning scenic views of the city, the bay, and even the snow-capped mountains of the South Island.

 

 

From there, you continue to a secluded, wild, and rocky beach where you will meet dozens of seals sunbathing on the rocks face-to-face and at touching distance. All this with interesting explanations about the area, the seals, and their way of life.

 

 

 

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