Had a nice drive to Auckland helped by very light traffic and 3 CDs which helped make time fly by quickly. Started with British Rock Hits from the 50s and 60s--songs like Hello Little Girl were nice and peppy.Then we moved on to Bob Dylan's Greatest Hits--he can get a bit maudlin and obscure but God, I love "Beyond Here Lies Nothing". After that we listened to a Dire Straits CD 'On Every Street'. My favourite tracks on that are Fade to Black, Heavy Fuel,Ticket To Heaven and My Parties.
By now, we were practically at Auckland and decided to go via Orewa for a touch of sightseeing.Stopped at that tourist outlook thingy at the north end of the beach to get some shots of the bay which was chopping up quite friskily due to the strong wind, sending some pretty good lines of surf towards the sand and speckling the rest of the surface of the sea with lots of white-tipped waves. In other words-it was quite an invigorating day!! Noticed some wind surfers and para-boarders way down the beach so of course the spouse had to get out all his big lenses and take some shots.When we got down to Orewa beach we stopped and walked over to get a closer look at what the board riders were getting up to.
Next stop was King's Garden Centre where I had promised the spouse we would find something nice to eat.He was delighted to find their cafe had macaroni cheese which I never cook so that was his lunch.I live in hope of being able to get him back there again one day.
Then we continued to Auckland and arrived at Mark's about 3pm.My nephew Ben was there so we had a nice catch up with him before going up to the Ponsonby shops for a poke about.The spouse's poke about cost him about $1000 and we returned to Mark's with several new purchases from the camera shop!
Had a catch up with Mark when he got home from work and then he took off for the evening as he had a date.Christa arrived about 7pm (after work and gym) so she, Ben and we went up to have dinner on P Road.Chose The Vietnamese Kitchen for dinner and it was very tasty.I tried their dessert sticky black date pudding--eeeerr--wouldn't order that twice---too sweet and sloppy.
Back to Mark's for coffee and a chat. It was lovely spending time with our nephew and our daughter--they get you laughing these kids---then the spouse walked our daughter home to her flat a few streets away.Ben decided the night was still young and went out again, and I ended the night reading the first few chapters of a new novel about detective Harry Bosch--Michael Connelly is the author and one of my favourite writers.
Tomorrow, we are Coromandel Bound.
