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As I step off the plane in OrcLand - oops! sorry, I mean Auckland - and start the mad dash towards passport control in an attempt to beat the hordes behind me, a large sign at a duty free shop attracts my attention. "Wine Special Offer: 1$ a bottle", it says. By my reckoning that's equivalent to about 45 UK pennies. 45 pennies for a BOTTLE of wine! No wonder people fall in love with this place!
The flight here - lasting about 27 hours in total, if you include the obligatory stop-over for refuelling at Los Angeles - has been pretty straightforward. The friend (Hi Gemma!) who persuaded me to upgrade from economy to business class was right to do so - the extra cost is more than made up for by the much increased seat/leg room space that mean you really can get some sleep while flying. And with the weight of the camera/laptop equipment I'm carrying, the increased luggage allowance is not so much an added bonus as a practical necessity that saves extortionate 'excess baggage' charges that would push the ticket price up anyway. The flight is pretty boring in many ways. It leaves on time. It arrives on time. Admittedly, for most there was some excitement at spotting a minor celebrity on our flight from Heathrow (the blonde woman who does soap advertisements, reprising her role from a British sitcom where she plays one of two women whose husbands are in jail - more than this I cannot remember, as I wasn't a great fan of the show) but otherwise it's pretty uneventful.
		I've left London just as the weather has turned nasty - cold wind and drizzle. So it's good to finally arrive in Auckland, an impressively large and efficient airport that puts British airports and the few American ones I've visited to shame. People are handing out free 'guide' magazines as we make the move towards passport control, and one just can't help feeling that, unlike say the USA and Britian, Kiwi's seem determined to welcome you to their country, rather than make you feel like you're a pain in the posterior for visiting. Rushing outside to catch the bus to the domestic flights terminal, I find cold wind and drizzle! Oh dear - I KNEW I should have made room in my luggage for that raincoat and umbrella. Too late now! Thankfully the weather has improved by the time we get to Wellington - blue skies and warm sun make this feel like Summer, although the Christmas decorations with white snowy trimmings around the airport seem somewhat out of place as a result. My original flight to Wellington was scheduled to depart from Auckland five hours after landing, so it's a huge relief to find I can change to a flight that leaves four and a half hours earlier, even though it does mean arriving in Wellington at 8am local time, which is far too early to check in to my hotel. The attitude of Kiwi staff here is SO different from back home, as if my wanting to change things was their fault and not mine! And although I'd been warned I'd have to pay excess baggage on internal flights, a simple smile and 'Don't worry about that, sir. You've come in on an international flight so that's covered' is all that's apparently needed to waive the charge. I'm liking this country more and more by the minute! The plane is packed and I don't manage to get a window seat, which is a shame, as some of the views I manage to see by craning my neck as the plane descends into Wellington, are just amazing. I start to feel like I've arrived in Middle-earth. Having landed, I'm walking down the long glass-lined corridor towards the baggage claim area and I almost miss the figure in the distance looking out over one of the airport buildings, seemingly at the planes that are refuelling. Fortunately a quick stop to rest my hand luggage while I check my passport makes me home in on the view out the window where I've stopped and as I gaze at the distant figure I realise that although it's quite a distance away the thing's as big as a plane. It's Gollum - and he's reaching out to grab a Ring that seems to just hang magically in the air. This sighting of Gollum is to be just the first of many reminders of the movies that appear to be everywhere in Wellington, and although there's been little indication of the movies on the international Air New Zealand flight, on the internal domestic flight things are rather different. We've been served coffee in paper cups decorated with a picture of Aragorn and Arwen, with the opening date of the film prominently displayed, and this morning's copy of the national 'Dominion Post' has a large front page picture of a huge Weta sculpture being lowered into place on the roof of The Embassy theatre. It's effectively the leading story in the national press. Hasty travellers rushing to Baggage Reclaim may have missed not just Gollum, but also the very impressive exhibition of movie props/sets that is on display at Wellington airport. As you walk down the corridor off the main arrival area there is a long exhibit showing four set pieces from the first movie. Guarded by extremely shiny, bent thick plastic sheets it's hard to get a decent picture, even with a polarising filter, but displays that include Rivendell, Orthanc, the Hall of Theoden and Bilbo's front room are as impressive as the exhibits currently on display at the Science Museum in London. Perhaps even more so because of their completeness - the detail in the 'Rivendell' and 'Bilbo's front room' sets here is amazing and Bilbo's front room looks ALMOST as cluttered and untidy as the flat in London I've left behind 27 hours ago! In fact Wellington airport is just a taster of what's to come. In the taxi to my hotel the radio interrupts its music programming to take a live call from the city's deputy mayor, already whipping up excitement for next Monday's premiere with promises that this is a day when Wellingtonians can be proud. The subject of the Embassy Theatre sculpture comes up and we're told that Richard Taylor, head of Weta Workshop, had been on the news earlier that day, admitting that maybe he'd got a little carried away with the size of the sculpture. Later that day I find out what he means (althouigh where I'm concerned no Weta sculpture can ever be too big!) My first impressions of Wellington are different from what I'd expected. Admittedly, the coastline is just as I'd expected and seen depicted in some of Peter Jackson's earlier movies, but the place somehow looks more American than I'd expected it to. Sure, like us, Kiwi's drive on the "wrong" side of the road. And their phone sockets appear to be British rather than American too, but the whole place feels like a town in America. It's only when I turn on the TV in my hotel room - to find a recent episode of 'East Enders' airing, to be followed by an advert for that night's 'Coronation Street' that I think heck, maybe my first impressions were incorrect! Checking into the hotel is easy (if only the same could be said for their expensive Internet connections - the reason this report is 18 hours later than I'd like is that internet connections in the hotel trickle slower than a slow-dripping tap on the planet VerySlowIndeed). Or at least checking in the luggage is easy. It turns out I'm far too early, and am told check-in time is 2pm, which leaves me with five hours to kill. I decide to leave the Te Papa museum, recommended by many who've been here before me, to another day (tomorrow!) and set off to explore the area. It soon becomes clear that The Embassy is within walking distance and indeed just round the corner the "promotions" for next week's premiere start. The lamppost outside my hotel has flags advertising the third movie, and these are all over the place, along with flags with reproductions of the New Zealand stamps specially issued to tie in with the movie launch. The Saatchi and Saatchi building, just round the corner from my hotel, has an enormous banner that is a replica of one of the new stamps showing Legolas about to shoot his bow. Look across the road, to 'The Dubliners' and you can see in full 3D effect, including some seemingly broken brick work, where Legolas' arrow has landed. This is to be but one of the sculptures I discover as I walk down the main Courtenay Place leading up to the ubiquitous venue for the 'Return of the King' premiere - The Embassy Theatre. Posters proclaiming the imminent arrival of the movie are on lampposts all over the City, but in Courtenay Place Weta sculptors seem to have gone wild. There's the huge sculpture of The WitchKing on The Fell Beast atop the Embassy, but also a Black Rider on a Fell Beast atop a restaurant roof a few hundred yards away. Everywhere there are warning signs about the streets being cut off on Sunday evening at 8pm. Posters and billboards also carry pictures of the cast in various guises, all seemingly promoting something whether it's MasterCard or some phone tarrif system. The movies really do seem to have taken over the city. Wandering into a newsagent the radio is again featuring a DJ discussing the forthcoming premiere. The occupants of Wellington are being teased to fever pitch. After my quick reccie of the area I return to the hotel to check in. There's only one other person waiting at the counter. I recognise him and my suspicions are confirmed when he declares "Howard Shore" to the receptionist. It seems the cast and crew are startng to arrive already, but I thankfully resist the temptation to play the role of 'screaming fan boy' and leave him to his business. It's good to see him looking a lot more relaxed than on previous occasions, although one suspects that by the end of the whirlwind world tour he may be looking considerably more exhausted!
The day ends on a slightly disappointing note, although as is always the case, every cloud has a silver lining. Suspicions my friend Stefan Servos from Ring*Con had warned me about at the Los Angeles stop-over turn out to be true: the press premiere of 'Return of the King' is actually the day before the gala premiere. Things were already looking tight/near impossible on collecting my press credentials for the big day because the Red Carpet tour I'm on doesn't arrive in Wellington until just before the Ringers party the night before the premiere. I make the relucatant decision to book The Duxton for an extra couple of nights and book an extra flight back from Auckland, effectively missing the first 3 days of the Red Carpet tour after joining their Welcome dinner. The extra expense and inconvenience is alleviated somewhat by the fact I will not now miss out on the Howard Shore concert in Wellington, and can relax about making it to Wellington on time, but it IS a disappointment, and one that could have probably been avoided if I'd firmed up my plans sooner and managed to book on the first Red Carpet tour that leaves Auckland a day earlier than the second one that I'm booked on. The day ends with my arriving back at my room to find two tickets for the Gala launch of the newly refurbished Embassy Theatre, with a screening of 'Heavenly Creatures' to follow. Yippee! I also manage to make contact with Richard Taylor's PA, who confirms my visit to Weta Workshop, timed for 9am on Wednesday morning - it'll be fun to see the place where so many of the fantastic make-up and models from the movies originated, and where all those Weta sculptures that are slowly starting to crowd me out my own home, originate from, and for me this will be a personal highlight of the trip. Click here for Day 2 report and stay tuned for future reports (indicated by a photo appearing in the main Itinerary calendar
Don't forget you can check out reports of lots of other Lord of the Rings -themed events in the Web Logs section

Email: ian@iansmith.co.uk