Cycling, Creole, Casino, China and Chilling....

That pretty much sums up our weekend!

We spent Saturday wearing Summer out down at the Waimakariri Gorge (5 mins down the road). We loaded up the mountain bikes and sun-cream (28 degs) and set off on a mission to tire out the dog as we planned to leave her in the house all evening.

After much gravel skidding, sinking in sand and general mucking about by and in the river, we headed home and got ready to head into town.

We had decided we would go to the casino. We haven't been there for a while and I was craving a live poker game and wanted to check out the scene before I decided whether to enter the New Zealand Poker Champs being held in Christchurch in April.

Beforehand we ate at a restaurant directly opposite the casino entrance, Zydecos. It's a Cajun/Creole restaurant. The food was fantastic, I suspect it will become a regular stopping off point prior to playing!

Back at the casino, we both sat in on a $4/$8 Texas Holdem Pot Limit game. Pleasantly surprised by the poor playing, and even more pleasantly surprised at the great company, we were asked if we wanted to play in the regular Friday night game, we may just do that.

We both left the table, 2 hours later, up on $$, to the point where we effectively had a free evening out in town.

After we left, it was dark, and time to visit the Chinese Lantern Festival being held in Victoria Square. Very surreal to see the centre of Christchurch decked out in lanterns, the wailing of the Chinese singers (sorry, but it did sound like a cat in pain!) and the smell of MSG in the air! The lanterns were lovely, some extraordinary subjects, the cow, sheep and sheepdog being my favourite! They even baaaaa'd! Unfortunately, whilst I can play a mean game of poker, I'm crap with the camera and only after I'd shot several unsuccessful photo's with the wide angle lens in place, did Woz realise that said lens was blocking half of the flash - hence the big black areas on the photos!

Luckily I managed a couple of decent shots!!

Spent Sunday in the garden mowing, pruning, weeding and generally chilling out.

What a great weekend!