Celebrity juice!

An early start was required for our lord of the rings tour, so we trooped down to the cafe below to get breakfast at around 8.15. I had the homemade muesli which was topped with yoghurt and fruits and was absolutely delicious. At precisely 8.40 the mini bus drew up outside so we rushed out and jumped on. Our guide, Tony, introduced himself and explained we had just two more people to collect, and then we were off with a full compliment of eleven. He took us out or wellington to upper hut to show us the locations for Helms Deep, the river Anduin, the short cut to mushrooms and the black rider attack, and Rivendell. All the sets were gone but he was able to tell us some interesting facts and let us recreate certain scenes. Apparently he usually has trouble getting people to join in but all eleven of us wanted to recreate every scene. Awesome! 

 Me as an Elven king. Look closely at my ears

Kathy and Vicky recreate the scene where the black rider finds them rooting for mushrooms. Note the four time (yes FOUR time) Olympic gold medal winner pretending to be Frodo. More of him later. 

In the exact spot where the hobbits hid from the black rider!

Gandalf chats to Saruman

He then drove us up to the top of mount Victoria from where you can see the whole of wellington laid out. Ian has had an e-mail to say he has win the lotto but can't see how much while outside the uk. If we have won millions I think we will move to wellington, it is such a beautiful city.

Tony then drive us to a fantastic little beach side cafe where we all had lunch and got to know the other people on the tour a bit better. There was a lovely German girl, an Australian girl totally obsessed with Peter jacksons  films and who had been all over the world, a couple of real geeky young lads from USA , and a very nice French Canadian couple who could easily have been voted in the top 50 most beautiful Canadians list ( any closer to guessing who the Olympian is yet?)

After lunch it was time to visit weta studios, which is where most of the special effects for LOTR were created. This was fascinating, lots of the props were there and we got a tour by Max, one of the paint artists. He must have one of the best jobs in the world. Weta is actually a vicious looking New Zealand insect and the studios is named after that

Throughout the day we noticed that the young Canadian girl was wearing an Olympic top so Ian (not me) asked her if she had competed at Sochi. 'Oh yes' she said. 'Ooooh' we all cooed. 'Did you win?' 'I got silver in short track speed skating' she replied ' but Charles won three golds'. Cue stunned looks and the feeling of being in the presence of greatness. In googling later we found that he was Charles Hamelin and had won gold in Vancouver four years earlier and is the Usain bolt of short track. He was on for five golds but fell in one and his brother fell in the relay ruling them out if that one. Together they are Canada's posh and becks. Imagine my delight!! They were a very pleasant couple though so I am rooting for them in Korea.

That concluded our tour and we really enjoyed it. We later had a stroll along the delightful harbour and ate on 'world famous Cuba street' once again, this time in an Indian. The discussion was all about speed skating and whether the bug Ian had found at Jungkes pool running round the kitchen was a Weta.