Wellington: the good side

After yesterday's miserable weather, we were pleasantly surprised to wake up to blue skies and sunshine. The sunshine was even quite warm! Esther headed home on an earlier flight but the rest of us met my friend Katy and her family, and had a Chinese lunch at the Regal restaurant in Courtenay Place.

The food was billed as yum char, which is basically tea and dim sum. I'm really too fussy an eater to benefit fully from the tiny and varied portions of food that were coming out, but it was interesting to try the different things. We had a constant flow of waiting staff bring over trays of hot food, and if it was something that we wanted they left a plate of it on the table and added a mark to our receipt. By the time seven or eight dishes had been added to the communal feast, everybody was getting full and it was time to go. The whole thing cost us $13 each, which was really very reasonable. I'm not sure I'd go back myself, but I'd recommend the venue to anybody who likes Chinese food as the Chinese eat it.

After lunch we enjoyed a leisurely afternoon in town. It was so hard to believe that only a few hours ago we'd been in the middle of winter, and suddenly we were back to autumn again and were even able to sit outside in the sunshine. Katy and I went for a quick flit around the shops, the others headed home on an earlier flight, and Skry and I then enjoyed a relaxing evening in town before catching our own flight back to Christchurch at 9pm. Overall, it was a very enjoyable weekend for me, a mostly enjoyable weekend for everyone else, and a great way to feel like we actually did something in the two day gap between work on Friday and work on Monday.