Farmer's Market

Having been a little disappointed by the market at Hill Street last weekend, we set out to the market at Te Papa http://www.harboursidemarket.co.nz/ to see if it was any better…and it is! Much larger, with lots of stalls selling the usual array of fruit and vegetables, as well as some stalls selling other types of produce. Fish was available fresh off the boat as well.

We need to organise our food buying a bit better to take advantage of this, as it’s only a short walk away from where we live. As it is, we bought some herbs (Vietnamese mint, kaffir lime leaves, galangal and coriander) to use with the groper I’d bought a couple of days ago.

Whilst we were in the area, we also popped into Te Papa to see and read about the colossal squid on display there (insert your own joke about calamari here).

Yes, those are people in the tank where it was being defrosted. 

They Do Things Differently Here

It’s the season for sales here in Wellington, and a number of shops are advertising on television. One thing that I noticed was that some shops were selling “Manchester”. At first, I took this to be a brand name, but it kept cropping up. “Blimey, Manchester must be a popular brand – all the shops are selling it!” I thought. But it’s not.

A prize of 100 internets to the first person who can tell me what Manchester is.

Shopping

Yesterday we went to explore some of Wellington’s retail opportunities. Earlier this year, the first farmer’s market was set up in Hill Street, so we went along to that, and bought some fresh produce and cheese from the suppliers there. Maybe it was because we were quite late getting there, and raining, but it didn’t seem particularly busy. Perhaps there are more stalls, and more interest generally, in the summer.

After that, we strolled down Lambton Quay, which is one of the main thoroughfares of the city, then headed towards Courtenay Place for rather more prosaic shopping – some necessary bits and pieces for the flat. We don’t want to acquire too much stuff here, as all our kitchen equipment etc. will be arriving from the UK in (we hope) fairly short order. We also went shopping for our housewarming party, which we’re holding on Sunday. We’ve invited all the people we know in Wellington – admittedly not very many so far, but that will change in time.

In the evening, we ate stuffed squid and watched the All Blacks beat the Wallabies again 20-10 – a much closer matcher than last week’s, but increasing their unbeaten Bledisloe Cup run to 9 games, and securing the 2010 cup.