WETA WORKSHOP!!!!!!!!

Our second day in Wellington, we drove out to Miramar in Wellington to see the Weta Cave...I had read the prices wrong and thought that it was around $100 for a tour of the Weta Cave. Silly me, turns out it was only $24! Woohoo! Before the tour, they showed a quick documentary that went into the history of Weta Workshop from it's beginnings until today and went into the creative partnership between Richard Taylor and Peter Jackson that started the company.

The tour was well worth it...I could have walked around for hours in the small workshop area that they allow visitors inside. Because they are often working on movies and television shows that haven't been released or maybe even announced yet, visitors can only see a very very small portion. They threatened that if we were to take any photos inside the Weta Cave, we will be sued like a gazillion dollars or something ridiculous like that.

***I might add that Don also enjoyed Weta Workshop. I add that because up until this trip, he had always sort of playfully made fun of my Lord of the Rings obsession. While we were staying with our couch surfing host family in Upper Hutt, we had been watching the extended versions of the movies and he realized that he actually really liked the movies! I also want to note that Weta Workshop has worked on many other movies besides LOTR including Avatar, the Avengers, Elysium, Edge of Tomorrow, etc.

 

I was in my glory...

We also decided to go out to eat for the first time since we had been in New Zealand...by go out to eat, I mean sit down and eat a full meal at a restaurant. We had grabbed sandwiches and pastries at different delis and shops but hadn't had a full meal out. Our couch surfing host Veronica gave us a buy 1 get 1 free deal for the restaurant we wanted to go to, Scorch-o-Rama, right on the water a few kilometers past Weta Cave.

The view...

This is my favorite view :D