Vot­ing in the Fourth Annu­al Wel­ling­tonista Awards is open from Decem­ber 1–15. Then come find out the res­ults at our Awards Night at Mighty Mighty on Decem­ber 17!

To vote, vis­it this page.

Sure, the city centre is hip and hap­pen­ing, but some­times it’s fun to take a trip out to the sub­urbs – well, as long as you’re vis­it­ing one of these places any­way!

Otari-Wilton Bush: Super-easy to get to on the no. 14 bus from town, Otari-Wilton’s Bush is a hid­den (and free) gem. There’s botan­ic gar­dens – all nat­ive; a can­opy walk­way for check­ing out the ker­er?; and hun­dreds of acres of bush to wander through with the occa­sion­al clear­ing for rest­ing your legs and tak­ing in the sun. When you get tired of that, have a bar­be­cue down by the creek (though appar­ently the coun­cil-sup­plied bar­be­cues are being fixed at the moment). While you’re there, keep an eye on the (avi­an) bird­life: there’s increas­ing and var­ied spillover from the Karori Wild­life Sanc­tu­ary up the val­ley. Rumour has it that a pair of kaka nes­ted here last sum­mer, which would be big news indeed if it you could con­firm it.

Empire Cinema: Not anoth­er semi-art house cinema in the ‘burbs. But it’s a blim­min’ nice one. But how does the Empire beat those oth­er sub­urb­an art­house cinemas? Ori­gin­al archi­tec­ture, big com­fy couches (per­fect for snug­gling couples or meet­ing new people), a decent sound sys­tem and deli­cious gelato make for a bril­liant exper­i­ence – espe­cially since you don’t have to pay for the park­ing either.

Maranui Cafe: Ah, Maranui! Even in your tem­por­ary absence, we salute you. This cafe/destination brought life back to Lyall Bay. The adults could sip their cof­fee while watch­ing the tykes get their life-sav­ing skills honed at the surf club’s Nip­pers pro­gramme. The sub­urb­an des­tin­a­tion was a town square of sorts for coast­ers of all ages. Trades­men’s Tues­days guar­an­teed a sup­ply of build­er types, the Weta-ites would duck out for cof­fees and the Fred­dies ded­ic­ated a song to the camel kids’ ride. We await your return with bated breath.

The Gipsy Kit­chen: When Peter Jack­son’s private chef opens his own deli in the middle of some “where’s that?” sub­urb, you know you’re on to a good thing that not too many people are going to find out about too quickly. The Gipsy Kit­chen in Strath­more (just before the Seatoun tun­nel, down a side street between an op shop and a Greek Ortho­dox church) is the per­fect week­end refuge. There’s great cof­fee from Matty Buchanan (ex Mighty Mighty), who’ll bring a smile to your face, incred­ibly deli­cious sweet treats (any­one for rhu­barb scone smothered in car­a­mel sauce?), ham off the bone, soups and pies to take home, a huge range of cheese, organ­ic eggs…

Jack­son Street: Time was we only ven­tured out here to vis­it Wanda Har­land, but these days Jack­son Street is so much more! The Dom Post called it the new Pon­sonby, which made us cringe. But, really, with its boutiques, antique shops and excel­lent cafes – not to men­tion the great drink­ing water – we’d hap­pily accept Petone as part of Wel­ling­ton and pre­tend it’s not really in the Hutt.