Wellington- Coffee and Galleries

Tuesday February 12 started out cloudy and windy, but by late morning the sun had come out and it turned into a very nice day. The high was about 24C.  We headed out late morning for coffee.  We went to Hangar, which had Flight beans.  One can actually have a "flight" of three flat whites made from different beans for $14 (we passed on that offer).  It was a great café with lots of choices for breakfast and lunch.

Hangar café

With heirloom tomato and avocado on sourdough- very good

With our "bomber" beans from Flight coffee

I could not resist taking a photo of the "smartass " tissue found in the bathroom.

Smartass tissue

We wanted to explore a few more streets and had heard about a special Wellington peanut butter called Fix & Fogg on Eva Lane.  There was a sign with Peanut Butter in the lane and one ordered through a window into a small basement shop.  They were also handing people delicious looking peanut butter sandwiches, but we had just eaten.  We did buy a jar of crunchy peanut butter for the trip.

Sign and menu

Handing me my purchase through the window-- lots of flavours

We then discovered Wellington Chocolate Factory on the same street.  The chocolate making factory processes the beans to bars right on-site.  The packaging is also quite beautiful.  We bought a bar for later.

Wellington chocolate bars

The factory- very nice folks

Just a bit further was the wonderful Leeds Street Bakery, where we bought a small loaf of sourdough bread and discovered that they were serving Red Rabbit coffee, which we had in Auckland.  It turned out that the company had started in Wellington and that the space we were in had originally housed the roaster.  The company has now moved the roaster to Auckland, but the beans are still available in Wellington.

Red Rabbit coffee

Counters where roaster used to be

We then walked on Cuba Street, which was named after an early (1840) settler ship to New Zealand, the Cuba.  Part of the street is a pedestrian mall.  Since 1995, Cuba Street has been a registered Historic Area with numerous buildings being of historic significance.  It is one of the more bohemian areas of Wellington and is the home to an eclectic collection of cafés, stores and music shops.  The continuation of the street, which is not just for pedestrians, has a number of restaurants.  Many have Cuban names- like Floriditas, Fidels etc.

Sign on Cuba Street

We then went to the City Gallery Wellington, located in the Art Deco building in the Civic Square.  Entrance is free to the Gallery.

Bill Culbert and Ralph Hotere: Fault (the two neon lines inside the gallery) 

We saw three very edgy contemporary exhibits. The first was Cao Fei:#18.  She is one of China's leading contemporary artists.  In 2017, Cao Fei was the 18th recipient of the BMW Art Car commission- an initiative started in 1975 by French race car driver and auctioneer Hervé Poulain.  She is the youngest artist and the first Chinese artist to be awarded the commission (previous recipients include Andy Warhol, Frank Stella and Jeff Koons).  Cao Fei's project has three parts--1) the car- stripped back to its matt-black carbon shell; a 6 minute film, Unmanned, which follows a monk travelling into a virtual future, where he performs a blessing on the driverless car; and an augmented-reality app, that creates a virtual installation of swirling bands of light and colour around the car.

Cao Fei 

Monk from the film Unmanned

Virtual reality monk with car

The second exhibit was In Transit by Yona Lee, an Auckland-based, New-Zealand-Korean artist. She makes large, maze-like installations.  Hundreds of metres of stainless-steel pipes are cut and welded to form elaborate linear structures.  She also incorporates a miscellany of surprising urban and domestic fixtures.

Beds in the middle of these structures

The third exhibit was called From Scratch: 555 Moons.  It featured the work of From Scratch, New Zealand's best-known art/music ensemble.  Formed in 1974, by Philip Dadson, it draws on aspects of experimental, minimal, and non-Western musics, and on Fluxus, and minimal art.  From Scratch is known for its invented instruments and its engagement with the sounds and rhythms of the Pacific.  The band toured internationally in the 1980s and 1990s, but took a hiatus after 2002.  In 2018, the group re-formed for a survey show 546 Moons.  The City Gallery's show, 555 Moons (named after the number of lunar cycles between the group's formation and the show's opening), includes films of performances, instruments and sonic sculptures, documents, drawings, and photos.

Room with some of their instruments

Playing music

Moi aussi

Posters of their performances

The 2018 show

We really enjoyed the exhibits--- the gallery's motto is "Contemporary Art that Makes You Think"-- very appropriate.

We then wandered along the waterfront and went into the Wellington Museum (formerly the Museum of City & Sea), which occupies the 1892 Bond Store, a historic building on Jervois Quay. This museum is also free to the public.  The museum has four floors covering the history of Wellington.  It is a more traditional museum, which lots of artefacts.  The main floor highlights the last 150 years of Wellington as capital of New Zealand.

Museum in the old Bond Store (when one enters there is a recreation of part of the Bond Store,  a warehouse where bonded cargo was held, until the owners could pay to get it out).

This alcove dealt with a 1913 strike that was not successful

Poster boards for each decade

There was also a section and a film dealing with the Wahine disaster of April 10, 1968,  when the Wahine, an inter-city ferry, was caught in a fierce storm and ran aground on a reef near the Wellington Harbour.  Of the 734 people on board, 53 people died.

Afterwards we stopped for a gelato/sorbet.

Alain enjoying his hazelnut and white chocolate gelato

We were able to go into the building which houses some modern Māori canoes (waka).

Modern day canoes 

We wandered some more and then headed over to Ortego Fish Shack for dinner.  

Ortega Fish Shack

Very buzzy-- lots of great pictures and photos on the wall

Fish in the washrooms

Alain under the big shark

The food is quite pricey, but very good.  New Zealand fish are a real treat.

Alain's white fish (we both forget the name) with a corn sauce

John Dory fish, mussels, cockles, saffron vinaigrette, baby potatoes

View down the stairs of the restaurant- we were on the second floor

After dinner, we decided to check out the location of a coffee shop we had heard about called the Havana Coffee Works.

Outside the Havana Coffee Works

We ran into two guys who turned out to be from San Francisco and sold roasting equipment to lots of coffee shops world wide.  We chatted with them.  Then the chief roaster and another guy emerged from the Coffee Works building---we chatted with them as well.  We said we would return for some coffee.

Cars from Havana Coffee Works

We headed back into town and up the hill to our AirBnB.