Galbraiths. A lunch time event to meet Claire’s best friends family. Arranged at a craft beer bar. The bar had a range of craft beers and I remember counting at least 12 before leaving the establishment. A definite draw back for future trips. The bar was decorated in a typically English style and of course I have a few problems with this because I question the authenticness of it and whether it as just in Australia, just a bar pretending it was english/Irish.

My thoughts are if you brew your own beer, you should be authentically local and not really pretend to be something else. Your selling point is indeed, at least in my eyes that you are local and you brew locally brewed beer. I suppose it poised a bigger question and that is, what is the kiwi identity? From my point of view I understand this question from the pubs I drink in and so far, I haven’t been able to establish it. The Aussie identity seems to be sports bars with cheap drinks and gambling machines. In the higher class venues, maybe a range of craft beers and a rusticy feeling bar although maybe this is just a world wide theme and maybe no country any longer has that sort of identity. Maybe it’s a sign of the times. 
The beers however went down well. I wouldn’t say they were earth shattering or whether I found my favourite drink in the world but they were at least nice. And 12 beers in there was quite a nice haze going and one that was lasting into the afternoon.

Claire’s mum suggested a walk into Auckland, I readily agreed because I really needed one. We walked for around 20 minutes and hit the Main Street of Auckland. At this point my interest in any sort of shopping has wained and what I most appreciated was the walk. We wandered around the Britomart precinct which was in my mind so much more than it actually was, a glorified DFO.

People wander by. Some run, some walk and some even dance. You sit and wonder what everyone is doing, what they’re motivations are, where they are going and what they’ve done. Shop workers, children, tourists. The guys doing the treasure hunt that sit on the beanbags in the square, take a picture and then run off elsewhere. Everyone has something else to be doing, and nothing that links in with what we are. 

People smiling at their phones, couples hand in hand, shoppers with lots of bags looking shopped out. Time ticks on, I wonder where Claire has gone. I realise ten minutes is never ten minutes though.

Claire wandered back about half an hour later and we headed off for our second Vietnamese meal of the holiday. This one was more of your inner city Vietnamese rather than the suburban one we had last night. The food was good about on par with the previous night and we then decided to finish the day by visiting the theatre to watch a play called Perplex and perplexing it certainly was.

I’m unsure really what it was all about. The characters weren’t static and everyone swapped roles. The play wasn’t linear and there were lots of corny jokes. Mix that in with s fair amount of male nudity and I’m not entirely sure what you have. I’m glad I saw it but I wouldn’t see it again.

Our return trip home in our uber was relatively uneventful and out Friday was over.

IJS