After a fortifying coffee and muffin from Starbucks we wandered down the street to Auckland harbour and caught a ferry east to Waiheke, a sleepy island popular for its beaches, vineyards and cute fishing villages. Paul tells me it is also beginning to become popular as a commuter town, and I can certainly see the appeal of waking up in a beach house and sailing across the sea to the office (well, the beach house and sailing bit sounds good, anyway).
Waiheke is also famous for its large community of artists, although in New Zealand there is a fine line between art and hobby craft and all of it is priced to make the artist rich overnight. We therefore politely looked around a local gallery, smiled at two or three things we could never afford and scowled at much more, then headed to a lovely seafood restaurant overlooking Oneroa bay for fabulously fresh fish and chips.
The weather was baking hot, Paul was still recovering from whatever bug drove him to his bed a few days ago and I'd started coming down with something similar so after a walk along the beach and a lengthy debate about whether or not our constitutions could stand a swim, we took a ferry home to the hotel and spent the rest of the day relaxing and preparing for our next destination. In scintillating news, this included doing the laundry, packing and repacking our bulging luggage and ordering some pretty grim room service.
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Ah, the relationship between art and hobby craft! - a topic Clara and I oft debated; I forget the outcome.
ReplyDeleteI was going to comment on the previous entry to ask if you'd lost weight, but I see from your new blog-head photo that you've suffered a ghastly accident with a teleport machine, so perhaps it's tactless to inquire.