I think I overdid the sunbathing...

...my Editor seems happy enough about it though!

Ok so it's not really a selfie. This is Lurtz (from Lord of the Rings), the first of Saruman's Uruk-hai to be bred, choking the first Orc he saw to death within seconds of his birth.

This morning we went on the Weta* Workshop tour. I'd not heard of the workshop before; it's been in existence here in Wellington for about 30 years but came to fame when it produced the props and special effects for the Lord of the Rings films. They've been involved in lots of other major films including Avatar and The Avengers. It was fascinating to see how they go about making the props and to hear a little of the techniques used for the effects.

This afternoon we spent some time at Te Papa Tongarewa (the Museum of New Zealand). This tied in well with the morning's tour as there's currently a very moving exhibition there, in which Weta & Peter Jackson had a major role, about the Gallipoli campaign. It includes some amazing 2.4 times life-size, incredibly realistic, models of NZ soldiers involved in the fighting. We also saw their exhibition about the Treaty of Waitangi, signed in 1840 between the Maori chiefs and the British Crown (not, I think, the finest hour of our history: the Maori translation of the Treaty left a lot to be desired, and the British weren't all that good at keeping to it anyway).

We only spent about an hour in the museum however as the weather has been glorious and we didn't want to stay indoors any longer. So we had a lovely walk along the seafront. The extra shows the row of beach huts there which seems to be quite well known (although it was new to me!).

(*Note: The weta is an insect species unique to New Zealand. The Giant Weta can grow up to 10cm long (yuk!). The Maori name for the Giant Weta is "Weta Punga", a name that is sometimes rendered in English as "God of Ugly Things" - that's how the workshop got its name.)