One Ring to Rule Them All...

Wellington is a windy place. Not just the people (although the food we've been eating has been making us fart quite a lot), but its a real wind-trap - reminds me of Gallowgate back home!

We spent yesterday catching up on rest and chores (such as laundry). We were even lazy for food - we got a pizza from Dominos rather than cooking or going out for dinner!

Today, however, we went on the Lord of the Rings Tour around Wellington. We were picked up by our driver Nathan at around 9am and spent the day visiting various locations around the Wellington area where Lord of the Rings was filmed. We started on Victoria Hill, seeing where certain forest scenes from "Fellowship of the Ring" were shot, and got the opportunity to recreate that famous scene where Frodo becomes aware of the Ring Wraiths chasing him (take a look at my photo site for the results!).

After that we visited the Chocolate Fish Cafe where all the stars went for coffee while they were filming in New Zealand. (its about 5 doors down from Peter Jackson's own home!). They do rather good ginger bread cake, let me tell you!

After driving past the various (rather low-key) studios that they have around here, we then went on to visit the locations where they shot Helms Deep, Minas Tirith, Rivendell and several others. Again, we got to recreate certain famous shots, such as the publicity photos of Orlando Bloom as Legolas, and the scene where Gandalf and Saruman walk through the gardens of Isengarde, discussing the One Ring (again, take a look at the photo site!).

The whole tour took an entire day, and was made all the better by our driver and guide Nathan, who was actually cast as an Elf in the Helms Deep scenes, so was able to tell us a lot about what went on in the filming of the trilogy. He was an excellent guide, and I would well recommend doing the trip to anyone who came to Wellington!

Tomorrow, we leave North Island, and we head across the water to South Island and the second leg of our journey...