Culture Vulture

On Wednesday night we headed to the Downstage Theatre for our first taste of New Zealand’s Thespian arts…viz, their production of The Spy Who Wouldn’t Die Again. (Watch this, it's a Youtube thingy.) This is a spoof James Bond (durr!) done with a particularly NZ flavour, and included such memorable characters as Gerald Bloke, and Spare Person. It was lighthearted and quite funny, with a few LOL moments and some jokes that clearly referred to Kiwiana that went right over our heads (who *was* that suited man?)

Afterwards we went for dinner at Hippopotamus, the restaurant inside the Museum Hotel, and one of Wellington’s finer fine dining restaurants. It contains some frankly odd décor – can’t make up its mind whether to be olde worlde or modern – but the food was good, nay, excellent. As usual I have some gripes about the service – something that NZ just doesn’t seem to get right, for reasons unknown.

We have joined an organisation called the Scientologists…nah, just kidding! We’ve joined an organisation called the Entertainment Book, which gives discounts on restaurants from fine dining to takeaways, as well as entertainment, activities, days out, hotels, car hire, all that kind of thing. This was done through Nicola’s choir, and we used it to good effect at Hippopotamus, almost recouping the cost of joining in one fell swoop! One more dinner and we’ll be in profit, and from then on the world is the seafood mollusc or arthropod of our choice. We shall continue our exploration of the Wellington dining scene, and report back here. Hopefully I’ll find somewhere that measures up to my exacting standards (other than Matterhorn, which has so far been faultless).