Four days in Wellington: the wind is the price, and it is worth paying

Three nights on the harbour, on a fault line: a free national museum with a colossal squid in it, a 1902 cable car, a fenced valley full of birds that should be extinct, and the workshop that built Middle-earth.

Copy this itinerary
Length
4 days, 3 nights
Where you stay
Wellington
Places
9 across 4 days
OpenFreeMap © OpenMapTiles Data from OpenStreetMap

Wellington became the capital in 1865, taking the job off Auckland because the government wanted somewhere more central and was worried about the South Island talking about leaving. What it got was a harbour with almost no flat land around it, on an active fault, in the gap between two land masses where the Roaring Forties funnel through. The result is a capital of about 430,000 people crammed into a few hundred hectares, with the suburbs stacked up the hills behind on stilts.

The wind is not a joke or an exaggeration. Wellington has the highest average wind speed of any city in the world, the airport approach is notorious among pilots, and there are days when walking down Lambton Quay is a genuine effort. Locals barely mention it.

In exchange you get the most concentrated four days in New Zealand. The national museum, the parliament, the film industry, a bird sanctuary behind a predator fence and a hundred cafes are all within about twenty minutes of each other, and you can do the entire trip without a car.

Highlights

  • A colossal squid, the only complete one on display anywhere, preserved in a tank
  • A red cable car climbing out of the shopping street to a garden on the ridge
  • Birds that have been extinct on the mainland for a century, calling in a fenced valley
  • The armour and creatures from Middle-earth, in the workshop that made them
  • A 360 degree view of the harbour from a hill you can walk up in an hour

Where to stay

Wellington, three nights on the harbour

Stay in the centre, between the waterfront and Cuba Street. The whole flat part of Wellington is about a kilometre across and there is no reason to be anywhere else.

The hill suburbs are lovely and impractical for a short stay: wooden villas, long views, and a hundred and fifty steps between you and the street every time you leave.

Day by day

Day 1 in Wellington

Te Papa, and the waterfront in the evening

Te Papa is on the waterfront five minutes from anywhere in the centre, it is free, and it is the reason a lot of people come to Wellington at all. It is the national museum of a country that has thought hard about what a national museum should be: Māori and Pākehā histories told alongside each other rather than in separate wings, a marae inside the building, an earthquake house that shakes, and a natural history floor with the only complete colossal squid on display anywhere in the world, hauled up from the Ross Sea and kept in a tank.

Give it three hours minimum and expect to want more. The war exhibition on the second floor, with figures at two and a half times life size, is the one people come out of quiet.

Afterwards walk the waterfront east. It runs unbroken from the museum around to Oriental Bay, a curve of imported golden sand with a jetty, a pool and a row of cafes facing north into the afternoon sun. It is the sheltered corner of the harbour and on a still evening half the city is on it.

  1. 14:00

    Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa

    Culture

    Free, on the waterfront, and the best museum in the country. Six floors, a marae inside, and the giant squid that everybody photographs. Three hours minimum.

  2. 17:30

    Oriental Bay

    Other

    Twenty minutes' walk east around the harbour, with a beach of imported sand, a jetty and a strip of cafes. The sheltered side of the city and the best place to be at six in the evening.

  3. 19:15

    Dinner on Cuba Street

    Eat

    Fifteen minutes back inland, and the part of Wellington that has kept its character. Small restaurants, second hand shops, and a kinetic fountain in the middle of the street that has been splashing pedestrians since 1969.

With more time: The city museum is in an 1892 bond store on the waterfront two minutes from Te Papa and covers Wellington itself: the harbour, the ships, the 1968 ferry disaster that killed fifty one people in sight of the shore. It is small, free and a good hour if the weather closes in.

Day 2 in Wellington

Up the cable car, down through the gardens, into Parliament

This is one continuous downhill walk with a lift at the start, and it is the best half day in Wellington.

The cable car has been running since 1902 and climbs out of the middle of the shopping street to Kelburn on the ridge in five minutes. It is a commuter service that happens to be red and photogenic, and the view from the top platform is the standard postcard of the city.

You come out at the top of the botanic garden, twenty five hectares that fall down the hillside to the edge of the centre. Walk down through it: native bush at the top, then the rose garden and the duck pond in the middle, then out through an old colonial cemetery that was cut in half by a motorway in the 1960s, with the graves moved and a footbridge built over the road.

That drops you at the bottom of the hill in front of Parliament. The complex is four buildings, the most famous of which is the Beehive, a 1970s executive wing that looks exactly like its nickname and divides opinion permanently. Free tours run through the day, and how much of the chambers you get to see depends on the parliamentary timetable. You leave your bags at the visitor centre and go through a checkpoint.

  1. 09:30

    Wellington Cable Car

    Other

    Running since 1902, from a doorway on Lambton Quay to the ridge at Kelburn in five minutes, every ten minutes. Buy a one way ticket: the point is to walk back down.

  2. 10:15

    Wellington Botanic Garden ki Paekākā

    Nature

    Twenty five hectares dropping from the cable car terminus to the edge of the centre, free and open always. Native bush, a rose garden and a duck pond on the way down. Allow ninety minutes to walk it properly.

  3. 12:30

    Lunch on Lambton Quay

    Eat

    You come out of the gardens at the bottom of the hill among the government offices, which means a lot of quick lunch places and a lot of public servants in them at one o'clock.

  4. 13:30

    Parliament Buildings

    Architecture

    Free tours from the visitor centre between the Beehive and Parliament House, several times a day. Bags stay at the desk and you clear a checkpoint. Whether you get into the debating chamber depends on what the House is doing.

With more time: Across the road from Parliament is the largest wooden building in the southern hemisphere, put up in 1876 and made to look like stone, which fooled nobody then either. It is a law school now, the ground floor is open, and it takes fifteen minutes.

Day 3 in Wellington

A valley behind a fence, a film workshop, and the hill at dusk

New Zealand's birds evolved with no land mammals at all, which is why so many of them stopped flying and why almost all of them collapsed when rats, stoats and possums arrived. Zealandia is the answer to that: an old water catchment valley ten minutes from Parliament, sealed behind eight kilometres of predator proof fence, cleared of every introduced mammal and slowly restocked. Species that have been gone from the mainland for a century are breeding in it, and they have started spilling out over the fence into the suburbs, which is why you now hear tūī and kākā in the middle of Wellington.

Go in the morning for the birds, or book the night tour and see kiwi, which is the only realistic way to see one in the wild anywhere near a city.

In the afternoon cross town to Miramar, the peninsula by the airport where the country's film industry lives. The workshop that built the armour, weapons and creatures for The Lord of the Rings runs tours of its actual workrooms, with the makers at their benches. Tours must be booked online in advance and they sell out.

Finish on Mount Victoria. It is 196 metres, about an hour's walk up from Courtenay Place through the Town Belt or ten minutes by car, and the view is a full circle: the harbour, the airport runway, the city below and the strait beyond. Wellingtonians drive up here at night just to sit in the car and look at it.

  1. 09:30

    Zealandia

    Culture

    A valley sealed behind a predator proof fence and restocked with species long gone from the mainland. Ten minutes from the centre by bus. The night tour, which needs booking, is how you see a kiwi.

  2. 13:00

    Lunch in Miramar

    Eat

    The peninsula by the airport, which is where the film industry ended up. A handful of cafes near the studios, and nothing else, which is rather the point.

  3. 14:00

    Weta Workshop

    Other

    Tours of the working rooms where the props, armour and creatures were built, with the makers at their benches. Book online well in advance. Roughly ninety minutes, plus the shop.

  4. 17:30

    Mount Victoria

    Other

    196 metres, and the best view in the city: harbour, runway, centre and strait in one turn. An hour on foot up through the bush from the bottom of town, or ten minutes by road.

With more time: If the film tour does not appeal, spend the afternoon on the south coast instead. A track from Owhiro Bay runs out along a raised rocky shoreline to a fur seal colony, which is about two hours return, exposed, and a completely different landscape from anything in the city.

Day 4 in Wellington

The memorial park, and out through the strait

The war memorial park sits on the ridge above the centre and is a quiet, deliberate last hour. The carillon tower was dedicated in 1932 and has sixty five bells; the hall of memories underneath opened in 1964 and an unknown warrior was interred in front of it in 2004. The park around it, opened in 2015, holds memorials given by Australia, Belgium, France, Turkey, the United Kingdom and the United States, and the Australian one in particular is worth the walk.

It is fifteen minutes from there down to the waterfront and about the same again out to the airport, so this fits a mid morning flight without hurrying.

If you are going south instead, the ferry terminal is on the other side of the centre and the crossing to Picton is most of a morning.

  1. 10:00

    Pukeahu National War Memorial Park

    Historic

    An Art Deco carillon from 1932 above a hall of memories and the tomb of the unknown warrior, in a park of memorials given by six other countries. Free, open, and twenty minutes' walk uphill from the waterfront.

  2. 11:45

    Last flat white on Cuba Street

    Eat

    Downhill from the memorial and on the way to everywhere. The airport bus leaves from the middle of town and takes about twenty five minutes.

With more time: With a later departure, the wooden Victorian house where Katherine Mansfield was born and spent her first five years is a twenty minute walk north, restored to the 1890s and small enough to see in half an hour. It is the only writer's house museum in the country worth the detour.

Before you go

Getting in and getting around

Wellington Airport is five kilometres south east of the centre, on an isthmus with water at both ends of the runway. The approach from the south crosses Cook Strait and the approach from the north crosses the harbour, and both can be memorable. A bus or a fifteen minute taxi gets you into town.

The other way in is the Cook Strait ferry from Picton, three and a half hours across, which is one of the great cheap boat trips anywhere: out through the Marlborough Sounds, across open water, then into Wellington harbour past the heads.

In town, walk. The centre is genuinely small and flat, and everything on the first, second and last days here is inside a twenty minute stroll. Buses cover the hills and the sanctuary; a shuttle runs to the film studios.

The weather, and the wind in particular

Wellington sits in the funnel between the two islands, which is why the wind is what it is. Gales over a hundred kilometres an hour are a normal part of the year, not an event, and the city is built for it: the buildings have handrails, the cafes have windbreaks, and umbrellas are pointless.

January to March is the settled season and the best time to come, with long light evenings and the harbour calm enough to swim in. Winter is not cold, around twelve degrees, but it is wet and dark and the southerlies come straight off the Southern Ocean.

Bring a windproof jacket in every month and something to hold your hair down. Do not bother with the umbrella.

Coffee, and eating

Wellington roasts and drinks a serious amount of coffee for a city this size, and the flat white is generally credited to New Zealand, with Wellington making the loudest claim. There is no need to research it: pick any cafe on Cuba Street or in the lanes off Willis Street and it will be good.

For dinner, Cuba Street is the interesting end of town, a run of second hand shops, bars and small restaurants that has resisted being tidied up. Courtenay Place next to it is louder and younger. The waterfront has the views and the higher prices.

Wellington has almost no room. The flat land ran out immediately, the hills are too steep to build on properly, the fault runs under the harbour, and the wind never really stops. Everything it has, it has because somebody decided to put it in a very small space and make it good.

That is why four days here feels longer than four days somewhere twice the size. You are never more than twenty minutes from the next thing, and you will spend most of that twenty minutes leaning into a southerly.

Or make it a longer trip

These trips pass through here on the way somewhere else.

Make it your trip

Every stop, day and place here lands in your account as an editable trip. Move the days around, swap a city, add your own bookings and costs, and share it with whoever is coming.

Copy to my trips

Common questions

Is four days too long for a city this small?
No, because the density is unusual. The national museum is a day on its own, the sanctuary and the film workshop are a second, the cable car and Parliament are a third, and none of it involves a long journey. If you have two days, do Te Papa and the cable car walk.
Do I need a car?
No. Everything here is walkable or on a bus, and parking in the centre is scarce and expensive. Hire a car only if you are driving on into the Wairarapa or up the coast afterwards.
Is the wind really that bad?
It is the windiest city in the world by average speed, and gales of over a hundred kilometres an hour happen every year. It is rarely dangerous and it is frequently annoying. A windproof jacket and no umbrella is the local answer.
Can I do the Lord of the Rings thing properly?
The workshop tour in Miramar is the real one, because it is a working prop and effects house rather than a set. Half day and full day tours also run to filming locations around the region, including the hills used for Rivendell, and they need a booking and a whole afternoon.
Should I take the ferry to the South Island?
If you have the time, yes. Three and a half hours from the terminal in town to Picton, most of it through the Marlborough Sounds, and it costs a fraction of the flight. Book ahead in summer, especially with a car.