Kiwi Fried Chicken Bakery and Coffee Shop

What's up with the funny restaurant names here, anyway? The Kiwi Fried Chicken Bakery and Coffee Shop was en route to Wellington down Highway 2. I guess I've never connected fried chicken with a bakery and coffee shop. Maybe I'm just not using my imagination (or maybe I don't want to in that instance!). I've also passed a couple "Chinese Smorgasbords". I consider a smorgasbord particularly Scandinavian, so hearing it applied to Chinese food is just a little funny for me. Chinese buffet, yes, but smorgasbord??? And don't forget Lord of the Kebabs, still one of my favorites. The Wellington Restaurant Scene. Anne and I tried out some fabulous places to eat in Wellington. Not too many, since we found restaurants there to be more expensive than we'd expected. But oooh, the ones we did eat at were worth it! We went in just for drinks on Friday night and found a fun little upper balcony along Cuba Mall, a pedestrian street of shops and restaurants, to sit out on. Anne's take on this (I warned her I 'd put this up since it is too funny!) was that "this is so surreal. I feel like I'm on Sesame Street." "Only you're in a bar drinking your peachy bottle of alcohol..." We also found some other yummy places, all on Cuba Street actually - they had some good restaurants along there! We had a malaysian dinner, which was just fabulous. So fabulous in fact, that I brought half of it home on my shirt! Anne tried to tell me that it wasn't really obvious, but seriously, I have not splashed that much on myself in ages! The next day we had lunch at Fidel's - a cute little place where the food reminded me a bit of Birchwood. We got a roasted root vegetable salad with kumara, beets, new potatoes, carrots, onion, rosemary, fresh cilantro (or coriander as they call it here) and a vinaigrette dressing. I also got a vegan pineapple coconut ginger muffin to go along with it. Mmmmmm! We also had a great picnic in the park on Saturday afternoon. We took the cable car up to the botanic gardens and when we stepped off, there was a sign saying that there was live music in "The Dell" for the Festival of the Sun. Of course we followed the chalked arrows down the path and found the nicest little stage surrounded by picnicers and all sorts of people lounging about enjoying the sun and the warmth of the day. We sat down and spent a couple happy hours people watching, writing and listening to music. It felt so nice to be surrounded by all sortsa hippie/alternative-type people. I've been missing that! It wasn't quite May Day by a long shot, but the atmosphere felt reminiscent of it. There was one little boy who was probably about 6 and was so cute! He was trying to breakdance and had the most bad-ass, concentrated expression on his face the whole time. His two little girl companions were leaping about in their fairy tulle skirt and summer dresses and having a grand old time. Anne's Host Family. I know quite a few of you will be happy to hear that Anne's host parents are soooo nice! They are fabulous people and are taking great care of her and took great care of me as well. They have the sweetest cat and were so incredibly generous, helping with our laundry, my tent, washing my car (!), and anything else you could possibly imagining them fussing over us. Her host mom even gave me a paua shell that they'd found at the beach (one of the pretty ones, with an inside all shiny and multi-colored like an abolone or an opal). We didn't get a chance to try out the spa pool, unfortunately, but that's just because we were so tired when we returned home from our wanderings about Wellington! By the way, Wellington has the greatest library! It is a new building right on the waterfront with beautiful views and gorgeous open spaces to browse through and read the many books and journals and such that they have stored there. It almost rivalled the library on the Sogn campus at the University of Oslo, but nothing can quite touch that library yet. That one was exquisite. Leave it to the Scandinavians to get my top marks for design!