Meet the People - 17

Jennifer Looman - centre. Photo by Tanja Dove Photography.

Another in the Series Meet the People – Ordinary and Extraordinary New Zealanders Doing Interesting Things – Wellington’s Jennifer Looman has a quirky, personalised approach to tourism – she’s just as happy showing off her favourite public bathroom…location a secret unless you join one of her City of Style Tours….as she is telling her guests what the capital’s Cable Car meant to her when she was young. Or there was the time she took a group of Canadian women to look over the Parliament Buildings and as they stood there, the red carpet was rolled out and the Prime Minister took to the steps to greet the Prime Minister of Vanuatu – with a full Maori welcome in tow. “I spent the next 30 minutes explaining where Vanuatu was and Txted pictures of the Prime Minister were sent back to their families within the hour. It was a pretty cool moment,” she says. Jennifer set up Wild About Wellington just over two years ago – “because I had just turned 40 and I lay in bed worrying that if I didn’t take the plunge and do something that thrilled me to the core, then I might just miss out on something dreadfully important.” Anyone who has joined Jennifer on one of her tours is no doubt highly appreciative of her moment of epiphany. There’s a City of Style Tour that takes you to meet local fashion designers and a Boutique Beer Tour (see below post) that introduces you to our finest ales – and both tours packed with great people, stories, coffee, arts, food and shopping. www.wildaboutwellington.co.nz

Raising Your Glass

Wellington beer expert, Neil Miller, right with David Wild. Photo by Tanja Dove Photography.

“Getting plonked on Fiji bitter on an outer Fijian island” was about Jennifer Looman’s lot until she met Wellington beer expert, Neil Miller (pictured above right), who is now the key to Wild About Wellington’s hugely successful Boutique Beer Tours. “I’m now slightly snobby about drinking something with a clean finish and with a decent amount of hops,” she says. “Tuatara is my all-time favourite brewery – I love the whole range.” With big breweries stitching up so much of the industry there is sometimes little scope for small New Zealand breweries “to provide their nectar on tap in big cities” but in Wellington The Malthouse is a beer drinker’s Mecca with over 150 beers to choose from, and around 30 of those on tap. You can take the 3-hour walking beer tour yourself – day or night - to explore some of Wellington’s other brewery/beer highlights – “ like Sassy Red from Macs, or Mayhem by Epic in Auckland. I’ll go out in a southerly to have that,” says Jennifer. www.wildaboutwellington.co.nz