Wainui and Day’s Bay on Valentine’s Day

We spent Valentine’s Day with our SLG friends, starting with meeting up at our friend Trish’s home for a delicious morning tea in her beautiful garden.  As you can see, it was another lovely sunny day in paradise here in New Zealand.

Gnomes in the garden

Trish was in charge of organizing our day out, and thought we would be interested in driving up the Wainuiomata Hill to view the new Pukeatua Lookout, Bridge and Walkway.

I used to live in Wainuiomata (in a former life many years ago) and it was a busy bustling suburb filled with young families, and known then as Nappy Valley.  Three of us climbed the short walk up the hill to check out the new foot bridge.  A couple of keen joggers ran past us on their way up the hill track, and there was plenty of traffic hurtling along the road underneath us.

Lunch was next on the agenda and we drove around the Eastern Bays to Day’s Bay.  We were lunching at the trendy café/restaurant Sea Salt, although we remembered it being the best place to buy ice-creams many years ago when it was trading as a dairy.   Whitebait was on the menu, a real delicacy in this part of the world, and I certainly considered having this.  In the end I chose prawns in a creamy sauce, and Robin’s lunch was a bacon butty, sharing a bowl of curly fries.  Everyone enjoyed their meals, with several ordering the whitebait omelet.

Lunch at Sea Salt, Day’s Bay

We had a great view from our table out to the beach outside.  Day’s Bay has long been a favourite place to visit in the summer, very popular with families with safe swimming, boats for hire for the keen and active, a wharf to explore and an adjacent park over the road.  There were a few in swimming, a couple of sun bathers, we noticed.  We have spent many happy sunny days here over the years.

Day’s Bay

Our day concluded with a trip back to Trish’s home and another cuppa, then we got on with the very important job of “drawing the month” for the next lot of outings.  Everyone pulled a folded piece of paper out of a bowl to see which month they had to plan their next outing.  There were a few swaps between ourselves to enable lee-way for holidays and special occasions and we all went away clutching our little bits of paper.  Wonder what will be planned for our next round of SLG outings?  Whatever happens, it’s sure to be fun.