Saturdy

I phoned home and had a nice chat with Kirsty and Jane this morning, Jane was telling us about her trip to Spain she has won for selling the 2000th car at Marshalls. She will be going to Barcelona for four days in November.

We took Totty down to Rotary Park this morning much later than we usually do because I was on the phone and although it was dry the ground was very wet as we had the heaviest rainfall last night and it was so noisy on the roof.

Jon and I went down to a bar near the port, I have been there before but Jon hasn't. The bar is under a block of very plush, new apartments which unfortunately are not selling very well. Attached to the back of the apartments is a boat storage and the boasts sail in through a tunnel in the middle of the apartments and are put on a lift and stored on big racks for the winter. Does that sound complicated? I will take the camera next time we go and put a photo on to explain. Anyway, the bar is very nice and we sat outside overlooking the harbour and a had a coffee and a piece of very nice lemon and passion fruit cake with cream - we did share one between us! We did walk the calories off when we finished by walking round part of the harbour.

In the afternoon we took Totty up to Te Puna Quarry Park and went down a track we have never done before to see the newly planted Kauri trees. It was very steep and we had to cross over a stream and then climb up very high again, went through some thick bush but we didn't find the Kauri trees and rather than go higher we turned back and walked around the park looking at the lovely orchids which are now in full bloom. We found some other paths that we have not been on before and saw some lovely spring flowers. When we got back to the car Totty was very tired and sat very nicely all the way home.

I have been watching 'How to Cook' with Delia Smith on TV and she made a very nice fish pie with salsa verde so I made that for dinner last night and although a bit of a fiddle and my kitchen was more untidy than hers was on the TV the pie was very good so I will do that again and maybe try it with different types of fish. We then had some very nice NZ Brie which was really gooey.