Today in Wellington is our tourist day. We get out of the hotel reasonably early, wanting to make the most of the time we have, and have planned a rough guide to what we want to see and do today.

We start by walking down Willis Street towards the Cable Car Street, stopping at a few shops along the way, and get to the Cable Car Station at about 11am.

A return trip is $6, and you are taken from the shopping district up to the botanical gardens at the top. Although it's called a cable car, it's actually a tram, and does get very busy, so we stand for the journey up to the top.

When you get there, the views over the city are amazing, looking out over the centre to the bay and beyond. We make the best of the photo opportunities on offer here and talk a short walk through the botanical gardens to the Carter Observatory.

We pay $18 for our tickets in there which gives us access to the museum, and into the telescope itself, my first time up close with one of this size and it is amazing, so hard to do it justice in a picture due to the scale of it. Our entry ticket gives us access to the planetarium as well and we make it in for the 1pm showing, which highlights the Southern Skies, and runs for about 45 minutes.

We finish up at the Observatory and get the cable car back down, managing to get a seat this time, and cross the road where we will pick up the number 2 bus to Miramar, for a visit to the Weta Cave. The 30 minute trip costs $4.50 each way and it feels like you are going into the middle of nowhere before the driver tells us we have reached our destination. It's an unassuming place and you would never know it existed if you didn't know where you were going. The surrounding area looks like something out of small town America, and the cave looks like its in someone's living room. As you go in, you are greeted by Gollum, and are able to look round in your own time at examples of some of the work carried out by Weta, before being led into a small screening room that holds 24 people, and you watch a video introduced by the founders of Weta and Peter Jackson amongst others.

Unfortunately, you cannot go into the workshops itself, but the cave does provide an insight into the work they do, and any film buff should find something there to enjoy.

After that, is back on the bus towards the hotel, there's Rugby to watch on television tonight, and we have a long bus journey tomorrow, combined with the fact that the clocks go forwards tonight, so we lose an hours sleep. Takeaways are bought locally and we call it a night, after ordering a taxi for 0630 tomorrow morning.