Monday, February 4, 2008

Dreamy Days (weekend recap)

Ursula and I walked home from work on Friday to her house (about one and a half hours) and picked up a bottle of wine on the way. And sat in her backyard waiting for Nick to come home from work.

We rewarded ourselves with dinner at a gross Indian restaurant (called Sitar I think). I ended up crashing on their couch (not that I was drunk, the transport situation leaves a lot to be desired here). The restaurant scene is the same as the transport- luckily I am not too big on going out to eat.

Saturday we got up early to go to the Otara market- which we thought would be a cultural affair, but was more for the poor folks. My landlady had a nicer way of saying poor, but I can't recall what it was- oh, "impoverished area." But we got some produce anyway (from China probably) so if you don't hear from me, you'll know what happened. Then we wandered through shops at Mt Eden (a suburb of Auckland) and had a lovely lunch at a cafe. They have the best coffee here- even in places that are highly suspect. After that, we searched out two used book stores, one of which was so disorganised, I got nervous just looking in the window. Luckily it was not open.

On our way to the beach suburbs, we passed by an organic grocer, Huckleberry Farms, where Ursula and I had a heyday smelling the various organic laundry detergents and frolicking among the bulk bins. I'm sure her husband Nick was sorry to hear what he had missed (he was off sailing).

Our last destinations were Mission Bay and Pt Chev, two more suburbs of Auckland on the beach, decidedly NOT impoverished. We parked the car and walked along the beach and boardwalk for 2 hours, watching the surf and sunbathers. Finally Nick called for us to pick him up from the marina. It took some major elbow twisting to get us to sit down for a beer with the sailors at "Swashbucklers." I went girly-girl and had pink wine. I don't quite have the taste for NZ beer- even the dark stuff tastes sort of like Bud Lite to me. It's funny, they all look like they should taste different, but they don't...

1 comment:

Unknown said...

be careful when eating produce that may be from china as they sometimes are fertilized with suspect forms of manure.

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=china+produce+human+waste+fertilizer&btnG=Google+Search