Prideshead Revisited

On Sunday, we had a lie-in, and woke up at the unearthly hour of 0715. We emerged for breakfast and had morning coffee on the balcony. The previous day, C had bought coffee and a cafetiere from the Indian supermarket. En route, she was approached by a scam artist with a sob story about an old lady who had switched the terminals on his car battery, and needed just $31 to reach his $200 to pick up his brother and sister. It never materialised why he couldn't just turn the battery around, but hey.

On the balcony was an Italian, a Spaniard, and a Chinese man, who were all very lovely and interesting. We are convinced the Chinese man works for the South-East Asian tourist board, as he never stopped talking about how amazing South-East Asia is. Both of us left wanting desperately to visit Thailand and Vietnam!

We came back to the room where C read for a while, and G learned to play the Bare (Bear) Necessities on the ukelele. G found on the Internet the only fully vegan shop in the whole of New Zealand, which just so happened to be down the road from the youth hostel. Karangahape Road, or K-Road as it's known, is one of the most eclectic streets we've ever encountered. It has a strange mix of Chinese and Indian supermarkets, South-East Asian cuisine, several gay bars, a few seedy gentlemen clubs, vintage clothes shops and a handful of Middle Eastern places.

So, we sauntered to "Cruelty Free", and after 15 minutes of fawning over their selection, we bought some cookies, toothpaste (which is lovely), coconut water, and shower gel. We even put in a request for the best vegan sausages, by Veggie Deli, whose range they already stocked. We then explored the Chinese supermarket to buy some cucumber and carrot for the picnic we attended in the afternoon. In the supermarket, there were dried fungi of all kinds, very strange-looking vegetables, an entire fridge devoted to tofu, several fridges devoted to pork, and some oddities in between.

We then tried to find some hummus, but sadly couldn't, so ended up buying a huge takeaway box of the stuff from the Lebanese cafe. Then, back to chop up carrots and cucumber with the bluntest knives ever encountered.

We headed to the Rainbow Youth centre (the organisation in charge of running Pride) for a picnic in the park. There we met some lovely people, and had a jolly good afternoon. C even met a fellow Jew with whom she played Jewish geography (Hasmo boy from Edgware... c'mon!) and G found a kindred baking spirit, who had the wacky notion of vegan chocolate and avocado cake, which is apparently a winning combination! Recipe swapping will surely ensue.