Keith's 29th Birthday

Keith's 29th birthday is his first away from home and in New Zealand. Although he's lucky enough to have a role reversal over me here in that, being in the southern hemisphere, his birthday lands in the summer there was nothing but pouring rain yesterday and nothing but blue skies as I write this the morning after.

Nevertheless, it didn't dampen our spirits to head out and have a good time and we donned wet proofs and umbrella's and headed out to our first stop of the night at Pomeroy's. It's a gem of a bar I found a few weeks ago on my way to the city hall and is a 19th century brewery and now heritage site. Needless to say, it has a lot of charm and more importantly, it brews it's own beers which are delicious.

We left after a couple of pints and headed into Cathedral Square for dinner which we had booked in the newly located Lotus Heart, a vegetarian restaurant ran by students of a "spiritual teacher" called Sri Chinmoy. While the restaurant itself has, for me at least, several drawbacks such as that it feels like you're sitting in a gift-shop, they do not serve alcohol and your food comes on metal plates, the cuisine is actually very good and one supposes very good for you too as it's all organic.

I ordered the wholewheat cheese-filled quesadilla served with refried beans and house salsa for starters which I have to admit, didn't do much for me and as a two-course person would have opted for the dessert menu which looked a lot more apetising (banana-nut pie!). However, my main course of a pizza topped with small leaf spinach, oven roasted pumpkin, olives, feta cheese, red capsicums & sprinkled with toasted almonds was fantastic and I couldn't even finish it because it was so filling - a large could easily serve two.

Although we all claimed to be stuffed, on our way to The Twisted Hop, Don managed to squeeze in a cheeky cup-cake which would have looked tempting but for my eyes finally matching the size of my stomach!

It is here we finished the night off sitting on the balcony overlooking the plaza and listening to the performers in the bar across the way and slowly making our way through the beers.