Lord of the Sweets

I'm a chocoholic. I could eat a bar of chocolate in one sitting, no matter what it's size is. Unfortunately, New Zealand is not as vegan-friendly as Austria and it's difficult to feed your cruelty-free sweet tooth here. The only candy I had for my first two weeks here was half a sleeve of Oreos. But this weekend, I got to indulge into chocolate-heaven. My culinary weekend started out on Friday night. Our volunteer-group went to the Night Market in Cuba Street, a must-see for every tourist. There are many stands with delicious smelling foods. Most of them, of course, meat or dairy products. Then I spottet them: Two girls selling raw vegan treats. I bought a lovely brownie and a freshly squeezed Orange, apple, cinnamon and ginger juice from a stand nearby. Heaven. Some stands sold non-edible things like art and pretty postcards as well. To be honest, at markets like this, I don't pay much attention to the overpriced and unnecessary decorative junk, whether it's a Christmas market or our spring fair. Come on, there's food a few meters away, let's look at that! Having said this, I got excited over one other store in the street: A second-hand bookstore with a huge queer section. It doesn't get more "Me" than that.

On Saturday, I went into town again to visit the Weta Workshop. On the way, I stopped in Newtown to check out a place I passed by many times with the bus. The large mural is hard to miss, but I hadn't gone there yet.

And just - wow. The place is the definition of quirky. They have food, one food, take it or leave it. It's also quite affordable, Ten NZD for a large meal, eight for a small one. The food was better than it looked, a little spicy, and the coffee was good.



But the food was not the interesting part of the experience. The place just looks like someone's living room with comfy chairs and a photography studio.

Overall, odd and positively strange premise, I'd devinately go there again.
I was feeling like dessert, and luckily, Hipster-Newtown has places that sell vegan cakes, for example Pranah.

From the logo on the outside, I'd have guessed it's named Planah or Pvanah, but the Internet says it's spelled that way, whatever

I had a raspberry brownie, a chocolate chip cookie, and a Choconut smoothie. It was more like a milkshake: Bananas, cocoa, peanut butter, and soymilk. The cake was good, not as good as what I usually make, but still nice. The smoothie was awesome.

There was some time left until I had to jump on the bus again to go to Te Aro, so I just walked around. A farmer's market took place, and I found the biggest Kumara (Sweet Potato) ever, and some actually ripe bananas. I'd have loved to buy some fruit if I wasn't so full and had a plate or knive with me. A nearby grocery store sold overripe bananas by the bucket, I wish I had a blender with me here.

Then I went to the Weta-Tour, and in the evening to the night Market again. At the Weta Workshop tour, no pictures were permitted, but I got to look at a bunch of original film props, like Sauron's armor and a Rifle from the movie District 9. I highly recommend doing the workshop tour as well to anyone visiting Wellington. For me as a film geek, it was especially cool.

These trolls guard the entrance to the Weta Cave

It was sunny for most of the time - on days like these, Wellington is awesome.
The following Sunday, I went on a Lord of the Rings-Tour where you go to some of the places where they filmed the movies, it was pretty cool to stand where they stood.

I cut the footage of the Weta cave and the LOTR tour into a video. This time I'm legally using music with the permission of the band Syca. Thanks for letting me use your beautiful song "The Spirit of Bossa Nova", which is the acoustic version of "Spirit Flows" from the album Seven. I love them, so please check them out, and maybe like them on Facebook