Another weekend flew by, most of it spent in Wellington. My daughter had just come back from Fiji so we headed to her place to return her pet budgie (we had been looking after it while she was away and spent a lot of time trying to distract the kitten from taking too great an interest in it). On the way down I was informed that there was a birthday party on for the daughter of one of the girls’ cousins who was turning three. My first reaction was ‘well, no-one told me, I’m not prepared for it, I’m not going’. The trip south had only meant to be a day trip.
Naturally, I ended up going to the party which didn’t actually start until 6pm, food at about 7.30pm. That meant I didn’t get away before 9.30pm. So much for the day trip. I ended up staying the night and headed back home the next day about 12.30. We hadn’t had any breakfast or lunch so we thought we’d stop at Paraparaumu for a bite to eat. We’d spotted a new Mediterranean place there on the way down.
Well, we got there and had a look at the shop part of the Mediterranean place. In a word expensive. Had a look at the food on offer – seemingly no different to any other cafe food and expensive. We’ll pop over to the supermarket, I suggested. Under the “Food to Go” sign was packets of ham. Ok. Headed over to the bakery. Nothing particularly appealing – basically just loaves of bread and buns. Thought then we’d head into the mall to the food court. Big queue at Mcdonalds which I didn’t want anyway. The cafe opposite had expensive food on offer but didn’t look appealing either. The Indian takeaway next door advertised chicken and chips and samosas. No samosas were available and the chicken looked like it had been cooked 3 days ago. Another cafe offered equally expensive cafe food which I didn’t want (huge cakes or paninis) but they looked stale. The pies in the warming oven looked several days old as well. Meanwhile, my daughter’s boyfriend got himself a couple of “snack” burgers for $2 each from Mcdonalds. My daughter and I then headed over to Wendy’s to buy a couple of “snack dogs” mini hotdogs (way overpriced but by now we didn’t care). However, the service was appalling. A young girl was standing at the cash register slowly counting dollar notes in her hand obviously incompetent. The queue didn’t lessen. My daughter and I gave up and headed back to the car. The burgers were eaten by boyfriend and announced to be disgusting with stale buns. What was wrong with Paraparaumu? To say we were not impressed was an understatement.
Got home about 3pm with a mere few hours until another week of work. I felt cheated of my weekend.
Reflections 