A New Zealand work trip is not a holiday. Which is why mine decided to start the first day at 5 am. Then 5.05. Then 5.15. Then every ten minutes until 7.
First stop, coffee at Red Rabbit. New place, new order, and I got one for my Australian colleague too, because yes, she is here. You do not know joy until a colleague you actually like turns up in the same city as you.
Then I found Passion for Paper (the shop, Italian leather notebooks straight out of Firenze) and I wanted so badly to love it. It is a bit old-time-ey. Assorted Italian postcards for $5. Not one single sticker. A truly heroic quantity of 2026 wall calendars. I left empty-handed.
Lunch was at a Japanese place I picked purely because you had to walk down a flight of stairs to get to it. Basements read as secretive. Secretive reads as good. This is not a rigorous system, but it has never once let me down.
And then, one street later, I walked straight into Bandung. An Indonesian place. I could have eaten there. I would have eaten there. Filed permanently under next time.
Recovery came at Lamplight Books, where I bought a poetry collection by Nina Mingya and a book of local poetry. Good bookshop. The kind you promise yourself you will come back to and then genuinely mean it.
Walked down the hill. Ordered a Biscoff latte with an extra shot, because it is a dessert wearing a coffee costume, and I had two more Blueshift meetings waiting for me. Came back happy. Sat through both.
Uber to the hotel. One full hour of horizontal chilling before dinner. Elite.
Dinner at Ebisu
We ordered like people who were not paying attention to our health or weight, which is the only correct way.
Beef tataki. Big Glory Bay sashimi. Eggplant dengaku, agedashi tofu, prawn dumplings, and teriyaki tofu. Then the big plates: free-range teriyaki chicken, miso-cured white warehou, seared duck breast. Rice and a plate of house pickles, so we could pretend there was structure.
Dessert was honey coconut custard, plus strawberry mochi. And sake. Plenty of sake.
Wellington with Flying Air New Zealand (bucket list, ticked)
Small item, big grin. Flying Air NZ has been sitting on my list for years, and I finally got to cross it off on the way south.
Hello from the windiest city in the world. It is not a nickname, it is a warning.
Checked into the Museum Apartment Hotel, went straight back down and had a Porto in the lobby, which felt very grown-up of me.
Dinner was at Dragonfly, with a rule: you order for the person on your left. I ordered for T. A ordered for me. Ten out of ten would surrender menu control again. The only thing better than choosing your dinner is having someone else choose it and then being pleasantly surprised.
Afterwards, a stop at Day n Night for an ice cream fruit snack (G’s shout). Also, for the record, Rainbow Baby Fish in pineapple flavour. The New Zealand lolly aisle remains undefeated.
Then drinks at Panhead on Tory Street, where I caught up on some office gossip that surprised precisely nobody.
Back at the hotel, I slept with no air conditioning and the TV on, because I love the TV on when I sleep. Slept badly anyway. Too hot, kept waking up, no idea why.
Could not fall asleep until 1ish. Awake by 5ish. Is this the New Zealand effect, or am I just quietly stressed out? (I have a strong suspicion about the answer.)
I spent my final few hours in Wellington in work meetings instead of day drinking. Not ideal. But I was doing it from the Qantas Lounge, which is the closest thing to a compromise the universe was offering that day.
Three days, two cities, one bucket list item, one Indonesian restaurant I will be thinking about for months. I will take it.
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