Entries Tagged 'Out and about' ↓

Took a couple of random photos on the way to work this morning.

There’s always someone who goes along in the morning and sprinkles seed for the pigeons – they must go quite early because there’s always birds pecking at it on weekday mornings when we head out around 7.30m.

Flowers are in full bloom and smell in the garden on the corner of Mercer and Victoria. Looks quite pretty.

Took a trip out to Lower Hutt because that’s where you have to go to find vacuum cleaner stores. In the past we’ve just gone to some kind of electronics or appliance superstore and helped ourselves (because those kind of stores never have staff that know the details about their stock) to one based on colour and whether or not the vacuum needed bags, because we always seem to end up with one that has really specific bags that we can never get any more of from the supermarket or the store where we originally bought the vacuum from because by the time we get around to it they’ve stopped making that brand!

Anyway. Going to an actual vacuum cleaner store means that even on a Saturday afternoon you get a girl who knows her stuff. I mean really knows. Asks about pet hair, floor surfaces, size of dwelling, willingness to clean filters, price range, who does the vacuuming etc etc and then demonstrates a range on carpet and tiled flooring including sucking up various items from pots of sand and wool fluff they have on hand, and lets The Mister have a go (he does the vacuuming).

So we’ve come away with a well-known brand, in our price range, that has bags (that you can even get from the supermarket) because we’re not inclined to clean the filter (and who knew you had to do that on a bagless one every week otherwise they blow up after a year or so, well now we do and if we’d had someone to help us in the aforementioned electronics store we might’ve made a different choice) , has a great floor foot that is good for cleaning stairs and doesn’t require all manner of attachments for different surfaces.

I give you the Hoover Tranquility:

So snaps to Godfrey’s and the very helpful Saturday Girl. And BEST of all, we just left our old vacuum cleaner and all its bits there to be disposed of. That was a plus on already great service – like getting rid of a Christmas tree from an apartment, broken appliances present similar challenges!

Hot off the press – Nikau Cafe is set to re-open mid-September! Probably around the week of the 14th. Great news. Apparently kedgeree will still be on the menu, no mention of date scones so will have to get onto them about that!! Yaaaaay!

Gotham’s first night open for dinner seemed to go OK, although perhaps a bit quiet. The menu is ‘cafe’ style I guess – simple delicious things like steak, chicken schnitzel sandwich, spare ribs and yaaaay for me, herbed tagliatelle with pesto. There was one staff member there who we recognised, and we recognised the owners sitting in the other booth and between them they recognised us as regulars because our waiter, who we didn’t know, came to tell us that our drinks were on the house in recognition of the support we’d given them and showing up on opening night. So that was *very*cool – and I didn’t even order peanut butter on toast so they must’ve recognised us just for being us!

So we’ll definitely be going again and it’s perfect if we want to work late because we can just nip down, get dinner done in an hour then go back to the office.

It was pretty hard to resist the temptation to order toast though!

Over the last couple of months the building at the uinversity that’s being built up in front of the house with the orange roof is beginning to look like a real building. Glass panels are going up on the front of it and we can no longer see the house.

We decided to go on a walk up through the university today to see if we could find it. The building is not as high as it seems once you get up there, it’s near the rec centre part of the university but it looks deep going back towards Kelburn Parade. We took in the view back over the city from up there. Didn’t realise how big that apartment building on Taranaki Street is going to be but it’s blue shroud certainly dominates the view at the moment.

Walked back down Devon Street into Aro Valley and down Aro Street. I’d forgotten how steep and curly Devon Street was and how shabby some of the student flats are.

We’ve been looking for a spot to people watch in the city for a while now, it’s one of our favourite things to do in New York – sit in the window of a cafe and watch people go by. Unexpectedly we went into Wholly Bagels on the corner of Willis & Bond yesterday for lunch and got a great spot in the window. And kind of New Yorky because we were having bagels! Didn’t try the coffee and there was waaaay to much cream cheese on my bagel. But still a nice spot in the sun to use again.

Half the city went out for a nice walk today as it was a beautiful fine and calm day. It seemed to us that the Frank Kitts lagoon was almost overflowing – not sure why! The path in front of the museum was practically overcrowded!

And every year when I see the snow up the valley looking so beautiful over the harbour, I don’t know why I attempt a photo – you can never see the snow in the photo! But anyway, here’s this year’s photo of the beautiful snow … on the hills towards the left …

New sculpture in the neighbourhood. Watched it being unloaded off a truck in the moaning, shrouded at first. Looked like a dophin or a whale but hours later when it was uncovered and mounted onto the pole, and with the aid of the binoculars we figured out it was a star! But you can see why we thought it was a whale!

New signs appearing around Wellington with a bit of orange in them – seems Star Mart has been renamed or replaced.

Feel kind of stink but I’ve let myself get rather disgruntled with Fuel Willis Street since the latest barista changeover and twice in the last week have made the hike up to The Terrace to see my old barista. Got into a bit of a moan fest today so I hope the guys at Willis don’t get into too much trouble. Weeeeell, maybe at least just enough to realise that while it is a busy site that speed isn’t everything and if quality slips then there are several other coffee places close by could be tried out. Anyway, had a fantastic coffee at The Terrace Bar as I knew I would and was greeted like an old friend. As a 10-year customer I should think so!