This week’s small pleasures #147

Here we are again, Monday evening, and a time for a round up of this week’s small pleasures. I missed The Propagator’s Six on Saturday this week as we were away for the weekend, but could not resist heading up this post with a photo of another of the miniature daffodils that have flowered and make our terrace look like spring.

First up, I was up in Taradale on Thursday night, and this was the sky on Friday morning. What a fantastic start to the day!

I flew from there to Auckland and met Karl for a short city break. We stayed at Hotel DeBrett in the city centre, an ideal location, lovely room and a good restaurant for dinner and wonderful breakfasts (I had Eggs Benedict two mornings in a row…..).

The main reason for our trip was to go to the Frances Hodgkins exhibition at the Auckland Art Gallery. I have liked her works for years, and this exhibition was quite lovely, showcasing a lot of her work over a number of years. I would have loved to buy the catalogue, but at $75 and probably weighing twice that of my suitcase, I decided not to, instead settling on a few postcards such as the one below.

Should you be in Auckland, it is well worth visiting the gallery. The exhibition we saw was in the new part of the building, built in 2011, which seamlessly blends into the older part of the building opened in 1887 (read more about it all here).

After spending a morning at the gallery, we took the short ferry ride over to Devonport over on the north shore for lunch. It is a great place to wander about, but unfortunately the weather was not exactly conducive to strolling about, being a mix of heavy showers and sunny moments. Anyway, we had lunch (a falafel burger for me) at Tiny Triumphs, and popped into Bookmark, the second hand book shop, where I found a 1960 edition of Nancy Mitford’s Don’t Tell Alfred with the original cover illustrated by Cecil Beaton. It’s not a perfect first edition or anything, but it was a small pleasure to find it.

It was a lovely weekend, and we flew back to Wellington on Sunday afternoon, where we discovered daffodils and hellebores in bloom – such a wonderful thing to see!

And that’s it for this week. What were your small pleasures?

Thanks to Mani over at A New Life Wandering for the original idea.

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