The Bare Necessities

Walked Around Day. There's no interviews on Sunday. Yay :)

I bought a sundae called Sputnik and once again I realized how imperfect my English was. The German pronunciation goes Shbutnick: Sh as in mash, but as in butcher, and nick as in Nearly Headless Nick. It sounds very Russian to me, so I didn't change a thing. The iceman said "Oh, you mean Sputnik" -- ut as in but. Ah, well... next time I'll know.

After I finished my ice cream, I decided to tick off the first and the sixth item on the "Things to do in Welly" list: Visit Te Papa and go see the Botanic Gardens of Wellington.
Te Papa is huge, and without a local to show me around it's just too much. Lots of Maori artifacts, music, paintings, shows, and traveling exhibitions, on four or five floors. Somewhere along the way I lost track of the whole thing. It's quite a nice place if you're into art and culture and such.
The Botanic Gardens of Wellington, on the other hand, aren't half as beautiful as those of Christchurch. Bigger, though. Rose garden (I don't like rose gardens!), herb garden (smelled good!), a huge forest, an observatory, a planetarium... the whole shebang. I spent a considerable amount of time trying to find my way out. In Wellington City it's a simple matter of walking downhill to get to the harbor, but when you're on the top of a mountain/hill, it's a different thing. You wouldn't want to end up walking west for ten kilometers only to end up in the middle of a national park, would you?

On the way back I happened to pass through Lambton Quay, the posh shopping street. Buying cloths isn't exactly something I enjoy, but once again I couldn't walk past a bookstore. Especially since they had the Jungle Book DVD. Guess how I spent the evening...