Today feels a bit like freedom, even though I a) feel jetlagged (see below), b) it has been raining and miserable all day, and c) I am freezing. Why? Because school holidays finished on the weekend, and I can reclaim my city.
Better still, Wellington on a Plate, which is a food festival held annually in my city, is on this October. COVID lockdown had meant that it wasn’t able to be held in August as usual, but it is up and running now, with restaurants all over the city and suburbs participating. They changed some of the format this year, so I missed out on the more formal dining options. But we’re now into the Burger event, where restaurants invent a festival burger. Some people try to eat as many burgers in the festival as possible, lunch and dinner for days. But we are just aiming at two or three, hopefully at restaurants we don’t usually visit, and hopefully out with friends at least once or twice.
I got up at 2 am last night to watch the French Open Final, the first tennis I’ve watched since the Australian Open in January. I am feeling extremely jet-lagged today, and badly need an afternoon nap! It was weird watching the game, with a sparse mask-wearing crowd in the stadium, few cheers, little atmosphere. I wonder what it was like for the players?
It was a huge contrast to the sports event I watched in the afternoon. A rugby test match between the All Blacks (NZ) and Australia in my city, where 30,000 people (well, give or take 5,000) turned up to a stadium to watch the first international rugby anywhere in the world since March. A pop sensation had played a concert to adoring teens and tweens earlier in the weekend. And of course, we have Wellington on a Plate underway. Life in Wellington may be wet and windy and cold, but it was a great place to be this weekend.
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