Travels with Tim and Lisa

"If my discoveries are other people's commonplaces I cannot help it – for me they retain a momentous freshness" (Elizabeth Bowen)

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New Zealand 2019 Day 4: A bookish moment… that wasn’t

Posted by Lisa Hill on May 9, 2019

Yesterday at the Te Papa Museum we picked up the brochure for Katherine Mansfield’s House, and today we checked the days and hours of opening, and found a taxi to take us there for a very special literary pilgrimage.

Here I am outside the house, all excited by the Bookish Moment.  (And impressed that a taxi slowed down so that his vehicle wouldn’t block Tim taking a photo from the other side of the road!)

But…

The gates were locked.  Impenetrably locked.

We got out the brochure and rang the number, only to discover that the site is closed for renovation and wouldn’t be open again till Spring.

Oh.

Now, I don’t mind them closing it, and since it’s the Off Season here in NZ, this is the best time to do it.

But why promote it with brochures in tourist venues if it’s not open?

I took some photos of Wellington houses so that it wasn’t an entirely wasted trip:

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This entry was posted on May 9, 2019 at 2:13 pm and is filed under 2019 New Zealand, Historic buildings, LitLovers pilgrimage, Wellington. Tagged: . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

4 Responses to “New Zealand 2019 Day 4: A bookish moment… that wasn’t”

  1. whisperinggums said

    May 10, 2019 at 9:41 am

    Oh darn, what a shame. There wasn’t even a sign outside?

    Reply

  2. New Zealand Day 10: Auckland War Memorial Museum « Travels with Tim and Lisa said

    May 16, 2019 at 7:13 am

    […] I had my first Bookish Moment of the trip.  (The visit to Katherine Mansfield’s birthplace, you may recall, didn’t work out because the house was closed for the duration). In a […]

    Reply

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