more update

i’m sitting here towards the end of day two in new zealand at the table in steen’s mum’s house outside auckland. she is preparing a dinner of salmon, roasted vegetables from the garden, and some home-baked bread. yesterday we flew in, jumped into the rental and drove out here. we drove around in the afternoon to the beach and bought clevedon oysters and some green-lipped mussels, then had lunch near clevedon (i had an oyster chowder and salmon over udon that were outstanding). we returned to averill and bart’s house (steen’s mum and stepdad), ate the mussels and oysters, then headed to auckland with steen’s brother lars, where we went for a feed and a drink. (i had a huge plate of mussels, followed by some smoked chicken ravioli and a lemon tart with lime sorbet and a fresh rasberry reduction sauce). we went to lars’ house after a nightcap and rocked the playsatan (motocross xp or something like that) for a few hours.
today steen and i followed bart down to the nearby marina and checked out the varnish work he is doing in preparation for the summer, and then walked the docks. dennis connor’s stars and stripes support tender was there (fairly unremarkable) and a little memorial to greenpeace’s original rainbow warrior, sunk by french agents in auckland back in the eighties, there was an ultra-cool looking ‘74 holden kingswood in the parking lot. (pix below).
it’s a bit cold here when the sun isn’t out, as it’s early spring, and showers have been intermittent. tomorrow bithiah flies in from san francisco, and we travel north on monday. time for dinner. steen’s blogged about the trip so far on his blog.