mr P and I had a very nice sunday afternoon chilling at, of all places, Boat Quay. We’re both on a bit of an austerity drive at the moment so I was looking for somewhere we can have lunch which wouldn’t cost an arm and a leg. The day before, I found out that Penny Black has a weekend 1 for 1 special on all food at lunch time with Citibank. I figured this was great because we could then stay on to catch the Australia-New Zealand semifinal in the arvo.

And things went pretty much according to plan. We had a very nice lunch of lamb stew and roast beef. I never knew this before but Penny Black has quite an impressive spread of mains and sandwiches.  And it was good.

Even at normal prices, I thought $14++ for the lamb stew and $16++ for mr P’s roast beef was exceedingly reasonable.

And a rare bonus these days — the place wasn’t crowded. We sat outside facing the river, watching the crowds ambling along on the opposite bank at the Asians Civilisation Museum. It was actually pretty hot out but with iced tea and beer we didn’t go wrong.

By about 3pm the entire stretch of the quay started filling up with fans and there was definitely a party atmosphere palpable in the air. Quite a few showed up in the smart All Blacks kit and there were a few brave souls who turned up in the ubiquitous yellow of the the Wallabies. For some reason Penny Black’s telecast of the game via ESPN was about 10 seconds behind whichever channel Harry’s next door had subscribed to. So fans next door started cheering each time a penalty was awarded, or the ball was given away or when New Zealand’s Nonu scored the first try, completely wiping any suspense of the game. Pretty funny but still… Anyway the kiwis were in their usual top form and Australia just couldn’t keep up. Pretty good score in the end. Looking forward to them demolishing les bleus next week!