Wel­ling­ton may be New Zeal­and’s most excit­ing city, but that’s not enough to earn us one of Wallpaper*s City Guides. Almost as galling as the news that Auck­land will get one next year is the fact that this dis­qual­i­fies us from enter­ing Grid­skip­per­’s $100 a day con­test and win­ning the com­plete set of guides.

Still, that should­n’t stop us. What’s the best way to blow US$100 (about $150 Kiwi) in Wel­ling­ton in a day?

The rules are: “Your US$100 should cov­er not just food and drink, but must include a vis­it to an archi­tec­tur­ally inter­est­ing site and some sort of phys­ic­al exer­tion. Sex counts, video games don’t. Do not include lodging as part of your $100.” Giv­en some of their examples (dime bags in Montreal?), leg­al­ity is not a require­ment, and the exper­i­ences don’t have to be quint­es­sen­tially or tritely rep­res­ent­at­ive of the city.

Some of my sug­ges­tions would include:

  • A trip on the East­bourne Ferry (highly weath­er-depend­ent)
  • Grabbing a gelato from Kaf­fee Eis and strolling along Ori­ent­al Bay (ditto)
  • Staunchly refus­ing to go any­where near Cour­tenay Place on a Fri­day or a Sat­urday night
  • Of the AA’s 101 must-do’s for Kiwis, the only one of the five Wel­ling­ton options I’d include would be the Writers’ Walk (and that’s free!)
  • The City Gal­lery (espe­cially the Michael Hirschfeld Gal­lery’s cur­rent exhib­i­tion of Mar­tin Thompson works), includ­ing lunch at Nikau
  • Walk­ing, shop­ping, eat­ing and drink­ing your way all along Cuba St
  • While I’d love to recom­mend a Mar­tini, and can­’t stand cucum­ber, a Fall­ing Water at Mat­ter­horn must be com­puls­ory

Let’s hear your own favour­ite (best or best-value) moo­lah-spend­ing oppor­tun­it­ies here in (Sil­ic­on) Welly(wood), and we’ll see if we can get it adding up to exactly $150.