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.

Although we might not always cel­eb­rate them as much as we would a new bar or great res­taur­ant, we know that there are times when you need to get out and do things that don’t revolve entirely around a drink. These are the places we like to head at those times.

Wel­ling­ton Cent­ral Lib­rary: When Alex­an­dria was sacked in AD 642, the lib­rary was des­troyed along with its con­tents, help­ing accel­er­ate the Dark Ages. In a sim­il­ar way, the loss of our fant­ast­ic lib­rary would plunge Wel­ling­ton into dark­ness. A pre­vi­ous win­ner of the Wellingtonista’s Best Build­ing award, the lib­rary is a treat for the eyes on the out­side and treat for the every oth­er sense on the inside.

zooWel­ling­ton Zoo: If the world is get­ting you down a bit, you need to head out to New­town where otters will come run­ning for your atten­tion, gir­affes will stick their tongues out at you and oth­er anim­als will also per­form sim­il­arly ador­able feats. It’s hard to be a hater when you’ve spent time hanging out with a red panda, after all.

The Film Archive: Ahh, the Film Archive. That great white mono­lith on the corner of Tarana­ki and Ghuznee St. You can offi­cially drink there (there’s a range of beer and wine avail­able) but more than that it com­bines a cinema, a con­tem­por­ary art gal­lery, a mov­ing image lib­rary and lit­er­ally hun­dreds of view­ing hours avail­able for free. There’s also a great cafe with wifi, the per­fect place for a quiet meet­ing, and a TV Lounge where you can take some time out from the hustle and bustle.

Markets by RobynHar­bourside Mar­ket @ Wait­angi Park: It’s nice that a sign of how soph­ist­ic­ated a city is involves going back in time to when people did their shop­ping out­doors, buy­ing dir­ectly from the farm­ers who grew the pro­duce them­selves. Some people love the har­bourside mar­kets for the frugal­ness, some people love it for the cheese. We love it because it’s a lively place to spend a Sat­urday morn­ing, full of deli­cious treats.

The wind tur­bine, Brook­lyn: If you want spec­tac­u­lar views, the wind tur­bine has them in large amounts. If you like sus­tain­able power gen­er­a­tion, this is the temple for you to wor­ship at. If you like a chal­len­ging walk or bike ride, come up here – or if you’re lazy, the road is paved the whole way for your car too. Every­body wins!