Northland

.

Well it seems that more than a couple of people were worried that we had been hacked, following the recent posting on the Strigidae Farm website.

Fear not folks – we’d only ‘sort of’ been hacked.

The post was from Larry, who is one of our travelling companions.

He occasionally does postings on the blog when we are on holidays, and its almost guaranteed that if we go out somewhere without him, and are silly enough to leave the computer on – then he’s sure to get up to digital mischief!!

We got waylaid with three delays for the same flight on the way over – which wasn’t all bad, as we did manage to squish in a trip to ‘Max Brenner’ for morning tea.
Calorie free eating at its best obviously!

We’d also managed to have lunch with a friend whom had driven down to spend a bit of time with us – which was lovely!
(both the lunch and the visit! lol)

It wasn’t until the wee small hours of the morning the we finally hit Kiwi soil, due to our flight being delayed by almost two hours.
By the time we finally hit the bed in our motel room we were just glad of somewhere horizontal that we could both lie down next to each other and sleep!
(and we’re not even going to go into how truely [unusually!] bad our room was – we were almost beyond caring…!)

Once we’d had some sleep, we went and picked up our car and then set off to our regular breakfast haunt when in Auckland – the Acorn.

The guy there is hysterical!
He’s a little skinny Asian man, who we’re pretty sure has ADD, and he tears around at breakneck speed with plates of food, shouting out the number of the table that the food is for, but never actually looking at the table numbers, just zipping round and round the room shouting, until someone claims the food.

No one has a clue what he is saying (probably not even his exasperated-looking wife) – which makes it even funnier, because people are trying to see what he’s carrying, and matching it to what they ordered, and to whom was in front of them in line, and whether or not they’ve received their order yet.

Its good cheap tasty food though, and is conveniently located near to The Warehouse, which we always duck into, to get pillows for our holiday.
Yes – we are particular about our pillows!!

Once thats all done and dusted – we were on our way to Northland!

In a wonderful stroke of joy, we found that since we had last driven from Auckland to Northland, the expressway had finally been finished and we no longer had to spend our time doing stop-go driving through school areas and suburbia and winding our way through the back streets of Auckland, before making our way through the city and then onto the Northern highway.

Its now a direct expressway from the airport to Highway 1.
Wheeeheeee!!
Over an hour shaved off the trip right from the start.

The further north we drove, the wetter it was getting.
This is not normal!

There was a moment or two when we looked west and thought that the afternoon was clearing, but then we would round the next corner and drive straight into another sheet of heavy drizzle.

Stopping at Whangerai for our customary pre-holiday grocery shop and a loo-break, we bought the necessities of milk, bread, butter, spreads, a few cuts of meat and some wine.
Salad stuff and any veg we wanted, we would grab once we got to Russell.

We arrived at Russelll late in the afternoon, did a quick walk around the block in the rain, then went and settled into our studio, unpacking our groceries and luggage, and generally making the place feel more like ‘home’ for the next few days.

It rained quite heavily on and off throughout the night, and for our first full day in Russell – and the rain looks to have set in.
Whilst it makes wandering around a little damper than we would prefer – we’re still soooo glad to be back.

We took a drive out to to the block of land that was bought out from underneath us just over two yers ago, to find that it still hasn’t been built on, and that the other block we liked still hasn’t been sold.
The heart-strings still pull…

After we’d been for our customary drive around, we headed along the Esplanade to go for coffee, and barely made it 20 meters along before we ran smack-bang into one of our friends, who was out for a Mothers day breakfast with her family.
We had a nice little catchup in the middle of the street and then it was time to go to our used-to-be-favourite cafe, for a coffee and a dose of people-watching.

‘Sallys‘ has been not just a cafe for us for the last 5 years we’ve been coming here, but also our office-away-from-home.
We’ve always loved the vibe and the people there, and happily pulled out laptops, or made the necessary business calls that still need to be done to keep work on track while we’re not there.

‘Sallys‘ was sold a while back though, and Graham, Sally, Tracey & kids and their lovely familiar staff are no longer there, and its now called ‘Butterfish‘ – and whilst its in the same place, and is nice enough – it just isn’t SALLYS!!

And if we’re being brutally honest – they just don’t do coffee and cake as well either.
And its not just because we’re sooks for familiarity!!
We’re both moreeee than willing to give props to people who give good coffee/cake – but its just kind of passable there, these days.

If it wasn’t for the location and the fact that they’re the only place open before 10³⁰am…. well…. who knows…
Its sad that the ‘vibe‘ has gone too though…

Just goes to prove that it ISNT all about Location, Location, Location!!

Max Brenner’ for morning tea.

Chef Suzey will be the Chef for this evening.
Lets see what turns up on the plate…!

A home-cooked steak & salad.
(hopefully at some point we can get the pre-dinner video loaded!)

Why do we love being here?
A picture says a thousand words…