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!