Not a lot to say today. We woke up and sure enough, the day was less than what we’ve come to expect here. Cloudy, a little cool, and VERY windy. Too windy to go golfing. 

After breakfast we put on our rain jackets (to block the wind) and went for a walk. We’d been planning on heading up to Hamilton tomorrow, and possibly stay there a week if we could find a suitable apartment. But our search hadn’t been very successful. So today, after we’d had a nice coffee in a cool little cafe a couple of blocks from our place, we decided to check out the motel across the street from the cafe. The sign said ‘No Vacancy’ but we went to the office to ask just in case. And after a little back-and-forth, we (well actually, Sue) negotiated a deal with them for a week’s stay starting tomorrow. 

We continued our walk around town and were very pleased to find that the city centre has tons of cool restaurants and cafes and shopping places. That, and the fact that there are at least 5 golf courses within half an hour from here, PLUS the great coastal walkway we discovered yesterday, means we’ll have lots to see and do here for the next little while — so in spite of the weather, we felt good about our morning.

Sue bought bread and eggs at the grocery store and made lunch when we got back to our apartment. We ‘wasted’ the afternoon holed up in our place. Sue read, I watched TV. We Skyped with my parents. We watched another episode of ‘Fargo’ on Netflix. Sue made supper and we ate it in our ‘sunroom’ overlooking the ocean. 

It appeared that the wind had calmed down a bit and we decided to go for a quick walk out along the Coastal Walkway. Tonight we headed north, past the Wind Wand, a 48-metre kinetic sculpture designed by artist Len Lye. (We plan to visit the Len Lye museum here in town tomorrow.) We only walked for about an hour — one of these days we’ll walk to the end of the 12km walkway, which goes right up to a couple of golf courses along the coast.

We were back home in our apartment by 8pm. Time for a bit of internetting and then some more Netflix.