Our Lunch at Te Papa
Wednesday - The day was kind of cloudy and windy - a good day to go to a museum. We hopped on the now familiar bus for the 1/2 hour ride to town. The Kiwi's (New Zealanders) are very friendly. I asked the bus driver which stop we should get off for the museum. He told us it's the last stop before the turnaround but that we should stay on the bus - he had to fuel up and the gas station was right across the street from the museum so we could get off there. Then he asked us where we were from and was surprised to hear we were from Mexico - he thought we were from the UK. Te Papa is a large museum which has wonderful exhibits about Earthquakes, Volcanos, New Zealand in general, wildlife, the environment and on and on. We had a nice lunch there and then spent several hours looking at exhibits - until we were worn out even though we didn't see all of it. We'll go back another day to finish.
Thursday we decided to take a day off from sightseeing, do laundry and take a trip to the supermarket. It's very interesting to see what kinds of things they have in the stores that are different from what we're used to. There are a lot of ethnic ingredients - especially for Asian cooking. Groceries are more expensive than what we're used to in Mexico - probably about like the US, though. One very bizarre item, though, is a product called Marmite (in Australia they have a similar product called Vegemite). My friend Ingrid told me to avoid it - she's been to Australia - it's vile. I mentioned it to our rental car people, and before we took off in our car he presented us with a gift of a jar of Marmite. They spread it on their toast for breakfast. I opened it and it smelled strongly of yeast. Yup - that's what its base was - 80% yeast, the label said. Anyway, it's indescribable. I tried a tiny bit on a piece of toast and Ingrid was right, it's vile. John, on the other hand, thought it was o.k. but he definitely prefers marmalade on his toast. I suspect we'll leave the Marmite behind for our hosts. I guess it's supposed to be healthy - full of B vitamins and iron.
I took some pictures of the flowers in Moira's garden this afternoon. You can check my Web Albums if you're interested. They are quite beautiful.
