Te Papa, Dim Sum and a walk up the hill

I’m running behind a day again. Our days are busy and don’t end until late in the evening so I don’t get to writing. It isn’t unusual to have supper at 8 or 9, at which point I have a twitch in my eye from exhaustion. I fall asleep as soon as my head hits the pillow.

The weather here changes from moment to moment. Yesterday morning early I woke up to the sound of pouring rain on the caravan’s roof. I rolled over and went back to sleep. When I woke up a few hours later it was cloudy and windy.In the afternoon it was cloudy and looked like it could shower. By 5pm I had changed into a t-shirt for our walk up the hill. Crazy, and I didn’t bring the right clothes.

So, what did we do yesterday with the mixed bag of weather? We putzed around in the morning, the girls doing horse chores, Kirsten running around doing a million things, and Shawn working. At 11:30 we all piled into cars and drove into town, heading downtown along the Aro road. I madly chewed on my gum as getting downtown is not a ‘straight’ forward thing. We made it, with Kirsten doing a perfect parallel park in front of the Dim Sum restaurant. Yum.

After a tasty lunch Shawn headed back home,  while we went to the waterfront. We took a nice walk along the boardwalk then headed into Te Papa, a world class museum. We went straight for the section on the battle of Gallipoli. It was a moving exhibit that brought tears to my eyes by the end.

We went home after that, at which point we all got ready for a walk up the hill. The girls walking their ponies, and Shawn walking the dogs, went ahead and further. Kirsten held back with me, patiently waiting as I caught my breath at every belvedere. We were out for more than an hour and by the time we got back my legs barely worked and were like rubber. I didn’t make it to the top, not even close, but felt I added to my fitness. The thing about hills is that going up is hard - heavy breathing and racing heartbeat - but coming down is equally hard, just in a different way. There are parts of the path that require that we do down sideways, and others where keeping on the brake to keep from hurtling down is equally hard. Good exercise!

So there was the day, topped with supper and to bed.

Hummm…. my eyes are closing again now and it is already 8:30 am.