Day 319: Exploring Silo Park — Dinner + Game Night with Jeff, Pete and Leilani

by Margaret · Published November 20, 2019 · Updated November 22, 2019

No real plan today, so we took our time eating breakfast and doing school in our room.

Eventually we made our way over to Silo Park down by the water. Silo Park was a former industrial part of town that got a transformation in the last 20 years for various America’s Cup and Rugby World Cup events. Now it’s a park, playground, art studio, public event space, and has tons of cool bars and restaurants.

It was pretty quiet there today on a random weekday afternoon, but there were still plenty of corporate types having lunch (seeing these crowds always makes me feel panic). We ate in a food court and grabbed a coffee after.

The kids played for a good long time while we just…sat there. Lots of that this year.

Eventually we walked down to the water to take in the sights, including one particularly massive brand-new yacht. Damn!

We video called Lobsy and Beepaw Brendan to show them the boats. So surreal to see Lobsy in her kitchen in Washington, DC. Just 24 hours before, she’d been standing next to us, here on the other side of the planet. Mind boggling.

We made another trip to Kathmandu, the outdoors retailer, because they’re having a big sale — I got a new pair of long pants and a long-sleeve long underwear-type shirt. I’ve officially retired my super-light baggy/breezy pants and replaced with three pairs of long pants, all black.

We got back to our place with plenty of time to get ready for dinner at Jeff’s house with Jeff, Pete and Pete’s girlfriend Leilani. James was insistent that he get enough time to shower and get ready — so vain, I love it.

Here they are, reading while we finished getting ready to go.

We brought a bottle of Man O’ War wine, a box of chocolates and the giant stuffed Kiwi bird the hotel had gifted us.

These guys were so nice to host us — they went way out of their way to cook us dinner, put out a cheese platter, have us try a bunch of wines they like — and they rolled out their favorite party game, Codenames.

About halfway through a game of Codenames, the front door opened and Leilani walked in, a little later than everyone else because she’d been held up at work. Leilani is pretty. I mention that because while everyone else was greeting her and saying hi, James got super awkward and tried to hide. This is exactly what he did when Shannon the hot Aussie zoo guide showed up in Queensland!! Teddy and I were dying.

The kids taught everyone Spot It, which we brought over as our contribution. Lots of laughs there too.