It was a nice day but I spent most of it indoors working on computer projects. When Regan came home from work, we packed up the picnic snacks and drove to the beach at Houghton Bay. We sat on the rocks eating cheese, walnut bread and hummus while intaking the rather "beachy" smell of old seaweed. The wind blew an incredible amount of spray off the small waves, almost making it look like a small sand storm.
Regan had brought his typewriter (yes, you read that correctly) so we could take a couple pictures for him to use on his blog as a travelling writer.
In the fading light of the evening, we drove up to the botanic garden. We passed the rose garden and headed up the steep hill to the herb garden. So many things smelled quite lovely! We wandered aimlessly, following the sounds of the tui birds in the enormous trees. At one point, we noticed the huge quantity of pine cones on the trees, precariously above our heads. We decided to move away for the trees and into the lush bush for a bit.
The herb garden
The giant Monterey Pines
Upon closer inspection!
The bush
We sat on a bench, listening to the incredible calls of the birds, and eventually wandered down to the duck pond (their calls weren't as impressive). Heading back to the car, we passed large beds of brightly colored and assorted flowers. There was still so much in bloom here.
The duck pond
My moa makes it into an official emblem. Regan liked the fact that the lion was in chains.
We drove to Oriental Bay (where we had filmed the last scene of the beach GoPro film) and went to the Parade Cafe, which was a restaurant on an old tug boat. Wow, I didn't realize tug boats could be so big! Anyway, it was 2-for-1 dinner night, so they were all booked up. We grabbed some hot chocolates and sat at an outside table, overlooking the water.
The tugboat-now-restaurant
The hot chocolate was soooo rich and creamy! It also came with ultra-sweet raspberry-flavored marshmallows.
This giant cruise ship probably spent a good 20 minutes going only a couple hundred feet. When we looked up a few minutes later, it had completely vanished! Regan tried to sell the story that it just took off very quickly. I'm convinced it sank in one sudden plunk.
We walked along the sidewalk along the beach. There were small benches on top of Fisherman's table restaurant and it would have been very nice to sit for a bit, but the colors of the sky had mostly faded and I was getting a bit cold. We headed home for an early evening.
Pink clouds behind a Cook Pine
A view of Wellington from the rooftop
The trees were all done up with lights.
At first I thought the fountain was lit up from the colors of the setting sun... until there were no more colors from the setting sun but the fountain just got brigher. Trickery!
Something clearly bit the heck out of my right foot and ankle because it was covered with small, extremely itchy tiny bumps. So much for New Zealand being completely harmless!
I turned on my laptop, as I normally do each morning, but was greeted with a horrible noise. It still seemed to still work fine but sounded like an old movie projector. After some research, I determined that it was a bad fan. I contacted the local Mac store and they told me it would take 3 - 7 days just to look at it, then possibly another 2 - 3 days more if they needed to order parts to fix it. So I just did my best to ignore the noise and work on it anyway. I found that if I tipped it certain ways, the noise was a bit quieter.
When Regan got home, he brought some small screwdrivers with him. I was just about to turn the computer off for some surgery when there was a loud clack and then suddenly the fan seemed to be working right again. I took the back off anyway but we didn't see anything obvious. I would have blown it out with some compressed air but the stores all close super early here. So I put it back together and will just see what it does.
Regan had made dinner reservations for 7:30 pm at a nice Mexican restaurant.... but when we got there, it was anything but Mexican. There wasn't a single dish with cheese (other than feta) and you had to order rice and beans separate. We decided to try another place... which didn't have any vegetarian options, not to mention no parking spots anyway. So we drove down to a place called The White House, on the same beach we went to last night. We had Swiss fondue with sourdough bread and vegetarian wontons with a plum sauce. He also ordered something called Old Mout Cider... boysenberry wine mixed with apple cider. It went very well with the fondue!
I do fondue
