Fortnight of Tourism

by Eve, in Design, Parenting (3 Comments)

It’s been a busy couple of weeks! We’ve had two instalments of visitors from Australia, so any established routine with Timmy (not that there was a great deal to claim in the first place) was put aside in favour of taking the opportunity to do the Tour Guide thing. To his credit, for the first few days Timmy was happy to sleep in the pram, or the car, as necessary — it was only toward the end he got grotty.

In the first week Timmy had his first experience of being 1,310ft tall (by going to the top of Te Mata Peak), visited the aquarium, Arataki Honey, Silky Oak Chocolate Company where we took a tour through the Chocolate Museum (despite the teasing grammatical construct, the museum wasn’t in fact made of chocolate), the Centennial Gardens, and had several stops at Starbucks for the rest of us to refuel. The friendly folks at Silky Oak cafe and at Starbucks were happy to warm Timmy’s bottle for us, so we all had relaxed breaks.

Timmy looked unusually enthused at an elaborate mountain made of decorative chocolates! I couldn’t resist the comic-making opportunity. While Timmy, unimpressed, was drinking his familiar formula, I had the Silky Oak signature ‘Hot Chocolate Extreme’…which, essentially, is just a small cup of melted chocolate to eat with a spoon. But, it’s a small cup of fabulous melted chocolate! Available with or without chilli added (in the museum we learned that chilli was a regular ingredient of early chocolate drinks), I’ve now tried both. The chilli wasn’t strong, I found — it just left a pleasantly warm finish in my throat after each swallow.

We repeated several of the visits the next week with the next overseas visitors: Timmy’s Aussie grandparents, who arrived on Father’s Day — an apt time to get a photo of the generation spread; three Doyle boys together!