shutter bug on the water front (wellington part 6)

Location: Wellington Water Front

Baskets Left: 3

i still had two more major stops to make here in wellington on my quest to get rid of the kete o te wananga. the three magic maori baskets had been causing some weird stuff to happen to me today. from the simple like bringing statues to life to making inactive antic cannons fire off at skyscrapers!

both these stops, museums, were both located at different ends of wellington's harbour front. a very lovely setting for a museum i must say. so to have two of them here was a real treat.

i of course had to walk said water front, and here is the most complete photographic record of it on the innerweb! i went a little picture crazy cause it was so nice, and frankly i needed to work off some of my magical angst!

as i hit the transition of downtown to harbour front (technically the waterfront IS downtown, but i mean where the buildings give way to the harbour) i made a weird discovery. maori koru (they are a symbol of life or new beginnings made to look like budding ferns fronds) growing out of the ground!

for a moment i thought that the baskets were doing something weird again, and making these up out of thin air. after a few seconds i realized i wasn't feeling the magic tingle i usually do...

these koru were supposed to be here, and were just neat statues in place.


i wandered into a really cool public square. on one side was the wellington central library and on the other the wellington public gallery. as much as i would have liked to check these both out, i was on a mission, and time was of the essence!


for some reason someone had stacked a bunch of rocks into cool stone towers. neat, but i'm not sure who has the time for such an interesting hobby?


as i rounded the bend i just about passed out... i saw not the first or second, but rather third UFO type thing in wellington!


only unlike the last two this sphere was actually flying!!!

just like the descriptions in all the scary unsolved mystery books i used to read as a hatchling (and not sleep afterwards much to craig's annoyance...) this one was floating and not making a sound...


unlike all the other false alarms of the paranormal type i'd had lately this one didn't give any signs of being a false alarm... meaning it was simply an alarm!!!


than as i moved suddenly the false came back into the alarm situation... it was just another statue (which by now i'm sure you've noticed wellington has no shortage of). it was a sphere made of metal ferns held up by a bunch of metal wires... which aren't the easiest to see. especially in the bright sun!


okay so with yet another UFOesque statue in town i proceeded onwards towards the museums.


outside the gallery as a big picture i couldn't help but notice. not only was it a pretty blue, and full of birds, but there was also a pterosaur on it. first dinosaur type thing i'd seen in new zealand since christchurch.

just up from the UFO square was the next section of the water front. (see like i said people of the innerweb looking at this post there's no way you'd get lost when you visit this spot in wellington ;p )

the first neat thing they had as a tall metal fern tree.

like i said really tall.

than you get to the section that connects to the harbour footpath, but there's a lot crammed into this 50 metre stretch... so don't expect the footpath just yet...

first you have to go by the split pyramid.

i really like triangular things. you don't see them in "real" life that often...

next you come to what i call the wood playground... it reminds me of the old wooden play grounds they used to have in canada.

its pretty big too. just look how small i am in comparison.

if you look really close you can see things built into it too. like this whales tail.

there's a neat sailing ship like window looking out onto traffic.

marking the end is a slightly menacing wooden barracuda.

once you're past that you're finally on the harbour front!

looking back you not only see parts of the wood playground, but also the tall towers of wellington...

which give way to the waterfront of wellington.

at the end of this section you can see a very cool fountain. being the fountain fan i am i couldn't resist checking it out!

this is one of the more artsy and creative fountains i've seen ever!

sadly it wasn't running, but i could just imagine it doing so... would have been a highlight of my wellington experience!

now that i was on the harbour front time to get back to business, and trying to get rid of these baskets!

my next stop the first of the two big museums in wellington...

to be continued...