New Zealand - February 15 stops

From New Zealand

It is very soon on the QCD that Kevin remembers why he has "issues" doing road trips with me. I am a pretty darned poor navigator. Though, I insist that no one would be able to interpret the map of Nelson that is presented in the "Lonely Planet: New Zealand". NO ONE.

From New Zealand

It took stopping at this "dairy" twice ("What's a 'dairy'"? we asked Anna. "It's the same thing as a 'milk bar'".) to find our first stop - The World of Wearable Art and Classic Cars museum. Yeah, I know. I'm still pinching myself. It was so cool and thank god I had taken time to work Kevin into Project Runway appreciation. Each year in Wellington there is a competition to design wearable art. From what I can tell from the video they played from the show, it is more a choreographed performance than just a runway show. The museum boasts 4 "rooms". (NO PHOTOGRAPHY!) The first contains mannequins wearing, I assume, either winning designs or possibly the most recent year's designs. The second room is similar but it is illuminated only with BLACK LIGHT with shimmering, glowing, iridescent wonder. The third room is a theater playing clips from the WOW video. The final room is the only place where photographs are allowed - the classic car showroom. Fortunately, there is some wearable art included, or I would have none to share. Really. None. Now, don't ask me again.

From New Zealand

Interestingly, Nelson (home of the WOW museum) is also the geographical center of New Zealand. (Actually, it is the geographical centre.) So, if we could pull all of NZ off the globe it would actually balance on the pointy sculpture then have marking the spot...if you turned the sculpture upside down. The view was nice, too. (It is very interesting that the geographical center (centre) should happen to fall on the top of a big hill rather than half way up or down in a sad little valley. (Though, I don't think there are sad little valleys in NZ. I think I read that this is what New Zealand translates into in Maori - the land without sad little valleys. I might have gotten that wrong.

The marking monument.

From New Zealand

The view.

From New Zealand

A photo that BEGS to be called "Off Centre".

From New Zealand

This same park in NZ is the site of the first NZ rugby game (oh wow) and the location of a (not-so-soon-to-be) giant Kauri tree (planted 1951). Saw them both.

Finally in Nelson, we failed to eat at Hell's Pizza. Rather, we hurried down the road to our evening destination - Motueka- where we hoped to see a movie at their cute art theater - The Gecko. (which isn't as cute as we were led to believe, since they DON'T SHOW MOVIES ON MONDAYS.)