eating out | Chaos roaming the world

Our first weekend in Wellington already had a fixed activity…Saturday evening, Mat made it a date to have a port night. As Flo has to work every week night and thus misses most of the conversation amongst grown-ups, we also made it a date to go out on Sunday evening for dinner. Just the four “adults” Mat & Liz and Flo & me. To be able to do this has been a real treat as we managed to have their kids babysit our kids. Zeph especially was great as a babysitter but then they are a professional by now.

Weather was still nice so we needed some outdoor activity. After the much needed laundry, we headed out to Zealandia shortly before lunch time. Lunch was had along the way at a French cafe, then we reached Zealandia after a terrifying drive through Karori tunnel…we realized too late that Timmy is too tall for the tunnel and had to do the same thing buses do: Drive in the middle of the tunnel.

Zealandia is just a great place to be. Showing the kids native bush and birds, we even finished up with finding a weta. Just an overall great day.

In the evening, we got to hang out with lots of cool people that we haven’t seen in forever. We used to roleplay with almost all of them at some point while we were still living in Wellington. I had too much cheese and just about enough chocolate and enjoyed the whole thing.

On Sunday, we were just tired. Some plans were made and then dismissed. In the end, we stayed in until we went out to dinner in the Wellington CBD. Flo had an itch to eat in one of our favourite place from ages ago (that is still around) so we dined in Capital next to the Embassy theatre in the end. It was a lovely night even though we didn’t make it back to Plimmerton before the gorge was closed and Liz had to take a detour through the outskirts of Wellington instead of going on the motorway.

No. 3 going native…barefoot in pak’n’save

It is rather unusual that we stay in one place for three nights. But we had full supplies, no deadlines and plenty of choice for things to do. We did want to take a break from any serious walking, though – the memory of the tower incident might still be too fresh. So, we decided on what we love to do and what this kind of travel affords us the spare funds to do so: Explore the next best town!

It rained during the night and stayed overcast for almost the entire day – which was kind of perfect for this kind of excursion. Not having had many distractions in the morning allowed us to meet a rather ambitious 9.38 am bus ride to town. It is only 4 km and we could have walked there, but for only 2 € the convenience of a bus was too hard to resist.

As a sign that we are -that- close to the Swiss border, the bus was operated by the Swiss postal service (a High Alps thing). We got almost a bit confused when all the signs and ads in the bus were in German instead of Italian 😊. Six stops later and we decided we were “in town” enough to hop out. Time to explore Chiavenna.

We got our first glimpse of things to come looking into the old town from the new bridge over the rushing river Mera. And we saw a lot of ongoing construction on the banks, covering up some but not all significant damage done by severe floods in northern Italy in the last years.

Before we would hit the old town, we couldn’t help but stop at a brand new Pasticceria (plus café) on the far side of the bridge called Soul Cake. I mean … we had to, right? I myself was quite delighted by the realisation that we are in Italy now – for I had the best coffee in weeks served to me. Nina was completely enchanted by the huge selection of petit-four, filled croissants and cakes on offer. We settled on a variety of three croissants and a bit of relaxation. After all, we had two hours to fill before the chosen restaurant would open at 12.00 noon.

Well prepared, all of us performed admirably at the 1 ½ hours stroll through the narrow alleys of the old town. The most impressive feature had to be the steep 8m drop in between the 4-6 story buildings down to the rushing river Mera. The shift to “Italian” feel and architecture is pretty severe – only 10 km up the valley you can find the wood-clad romantic idyll of the Swiss Alps, whereas here the Romanesque window openings and slightly crumbling yellow washed facades evoke a clear Mediterranean feel.

We finished our walk with a mere 20 minutes to bridge and we were able to distract the Agent with a feed and Number 3 with a magical little footpath cut into the rockface – all mossy green and gloomy. The place where you would expect to meet nymphs and fairies.

We got lucky by being there right on opening time and still got a table even without reservation. It turned out, as is kind of our luck, it was Republic Day today! No wonder we had trouble finding a free campsite for Thursday and Friday.

Anyway, we went to a “Crotto”, a local form of small menu restaurant that evolved of cellars for curing meats and cheeses. They had few enough items on the menu that we could basically order “one of each”. Once more, we got a bit emotional – because the food was excellent, home made gnoccetini (with cheese), cold cuts from their own cellar, polenta (with cheese :D) and biscotti for dessert – but more so because eating out has become part of our identity, and we were not able to do so for almost a year by now. We missed it so much! Even the house wine was great.

The bus was on time (Swiss precision and so on …). Unfortunately for us, we were not able to convince Number 3 to take a nap or at least a bit of rest. So, the rest of the day was a bit of a drag with him getting up to worse and worse plots cooked up by his sleep deprived brain. At least when it was time to go to bed, he fell asleep mid-sentence.

— sorry for the amount of pictures. We had to nights of gaming and I want to get is out, no willpower to be tough on the selection anymore 😀 —