Mundus Casus Pars Duo

  Thursday to Monday 23-28 April 2025 Saturday we all went to 5 th Street Restaurant in Christchurch for dinner to celebrate Angel’s birthday and a pre-birthday for Joanne. The food was excellent, served share plate style and a good selection of meat and vegetarian dishes. Sunday, was checkout day from our Dipton pet sit and an excursion into Christchurch to the Cellar Door, at the Art Centre, where we had a wine tasting and snacks. They have it pretty well sorted, with four x 40ml samples per flight. Jo and Flashy did two flights, including whites, orange and red wines. The selection was not limited to NZ wines either. Lady P had a sip of some of the flights and had a very interesting flight of vermouths. Their food was excellent. White anchovies on sourdough toast; Hapuka ceviche; venison tartare; hand cut chips and buttercrunch salad. Searching for hoki poki icecream on the way home was eventually successful at the back of Riverside Markets. Sunday night was our turn to e...

  Tuesday 22 April 2025 Rain easing off today and the temperature getting a bit colder. Lots of admin in preparation for our departure for the US next week. Wednesday 23 April 2025 The sun eventually came out and we drove into Christchurch to do a walking tour with Brian, a volunteer with Walk Christchurch. He is a retired chap about our age and we had a very informative historical and cultural walk for 2.5 hours, exploring the before earthquake and the after earthquake periods. The 2010 quakes killed 185 people in Christchurch; closed the city for two years and galvanized the student population into a mud army. Twenty five years later, there are still buildings closed up, awaiting funds for restoration and cleared sites that are temporary carparks, awaiting various owners’ decisions and Council planning. There are also many beautifully restored historic stone buildings and a new Art Centre, Convention Centre and stadium. Christchurch is a pretty city with a strong arts sce...

Easter 2025 Not much doing here as the weather is drizzly and cool. Saturday, we moved out of the house into the outskirts of Christchurch to go to a market. It was surprisingly small. Very little fruit and veges and fairly expensive. Many food stalls though, with a good range from Posh Porridge to dumplings, burgers and lots of pastries. We did get a bottle of boutique gin. Sunday was much the same and it rained drizzly rain and some strong wind all day and night. Monday was again much the same, so to avoid cabin fever, we went into the CBD to the Riverside Market. Not market as such but a collection of nice food outlets and all inside and warm. Packed too. We found Kaiser Brewing and had a couple of beers and some delicious fried cauliflower and fried chicken. Now, how good is fried food? An interesting observation on the Kiwi hospitality game - There is plenty of staff who seem to like their job. They speak English and probably don’t need a visa. People tend to book tables her...

  Saturday to Wednesday 12-16 April 2025 We have now circumnavigated South Island. Done 4,590 kms in our little car and I note that NZ is really one enormous farm. Of particular interest to Flashy, is the use of gigantic hedges on farms as wind breaks. The really big ones, between 6 and 10 metre high conifers; and so thick a skinny ferret couldn’t sneak through, are planted north-south. He knows this because he can use his analog watch and the position of the sun to find north. Then the scraggly hedges, all a lot shorter and often made of planted Poplar trees or even gum trees, they run east-west. We think the South Island is actually greener than Ireland, too. And as for the Kiwis. They’re a friendly lot. Hardy Scottish stock down here. The blokes run around all day in shorts and often with bucket hats and gum boots, in temperatures that would freeze vodka! Our house sit is in a new four bedroom house on the outskirts of Christchurch, in Lincoln, with a funny little Schnau...

  Thursday 10 April 2025 A 2.5 hour trip to Methven via Lake Tekapo was designed to get us within an hour of Lincoln on Friday when we take up our last pet sit with Stella the Highland Terrier. The Lake was, as expected, very stunning. The tourist infrastructure not so. Flashy commented on the many little piles of stones which had been collected by tourists and piled up to look like fairies had visited. Cute maybe, like on a small not so beautiful beach on the way to Port Douglas, although I know the Rangers want to pull them down there. But on the edge of a blue lake with snow covered mountains in the background and autumn reds and yellows of the trees. Well, he did contemplate kicking them down. What would the hundreds of Chinese and Indian tourists do? Let alone, the bus loads of Brisbane pensioners! Look, look. Click, click. Let’s get out of here. Methven had three pubs. We stayed at a motel and were one of only five rooms booked. Crap food at the pub of choice for dinner. ...

 7-9 April 2025 Monday 7 April 2025 Departed today for the long drive to Twizel, which is almost at the foot of Mt Cook. It was built in the 1960’s to house construction workers for one of the three hydro dams on the Hopkins / Pukaki Rivers and associated large lakes. Very stunning country. We are in another little one room cottage with ensuite, 200m from the town centre. Given the proximity to the lakes, there is a lot of water/fishing based recreation here in the season. After checking in and donning thermal undies, we walked in the sprinkling rain to the pub for a look around and a beer. Then, back home for meatballs and rice.  It rained all night with the sound on the tin roof letting us know Autumn is really here. This morning, there was snow on the mountains. Fell overnight and it’s not that far away, either.   Tuesday 8 April 2025 Around mid-day the rain stopped and the sun came out, making a nice photo opportunity of the snowy hills. A walk around the li...

  Sunday 6 April 2025 A nice drive down the hill to Potobello for a coffee and a scone, then into Dunedin to Noisy Brewery for a tasting paddle of their most excellent beer and stout. Sunday is a bit quiet in town but we walked through the CBD to Steamer Basin Boutique Brewery.  This is down “No Name Alley” and we walked through a street performance of actors and participants in the last day of the Dunedin Festival. Pretty strange. The brewery produced a nice IPA and the best peperoni pizza ever. “Do you have a glass of red, sir?” Yes, was the reply. An Australian Petite Shiraz was the result. I tried for a Pinot Noir, but he said they were pretty average in Otago! And they preferred the Aussie red. Flashy, once again, just went with the flow. Then home to our warm cottage for an afternoon wine. Researching USA accommodation and beer Love these old fashioned 5 oz glasses We were sitting under this. Look closely! A monument to the Salvos in Dunedin

  Saturday 5 April 2025 An early morning start today and off to the Dunedin Farmers’ Market. This was a bit small but an excellent range of high quality fruit, vegetables and other goodies, including a pastie for Flashy and a shared Chinese spicy crepe from the Chinese guy. Albert Einstein once said, “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.” Well, after the market, we went bike riding again. 30kms. Einstein was right. So, for Flashy – never again. It was so painful, he can’t recall enough to comment on the ride. That evening, after some pain relief, we went to dinner at Larnach Castle, 2 kms up the road from our cottage. The deal was a shared table of 18 pax and four mystery courses chosen by chef, to reflect NZ cuisine. The table was full and our immediate dining companions were a French couple our age and an ‘almost retired’ Kiwi couple. The castle itself was wonderfully restored in the foreboding Scottish style an...

  Tuesday 1 – Friday 4 April 2024 The last four days in Invercargill have been relaxing with nothing much apart from reading and doing some photobook work. Friday morning we drove to Dunedin to a little cottage out on the Otago Peninsula, overlooking the harbour and coast. Queens Park, Invercargill