Artifical flavours vs natural beauty

Yesterday we spent looking at houses and getting a social security number so today was about fun! We started out with breakfast at the Causeway Cafe. (We had meant to go to Artisan but it doesn't open until 9am!) Located on Harbour Island at Wrightsville Beach the Causeway Cafe is a popular place to go (including for movie stars). Last time we didn't have the greatest of experiences with the food so we thought we would give it the benefit of the doubt and try again. I had the Shrimp and cheese omlet with hollandaise sauce and grits on the side, Andrew had 3 malted pancakes with strawberries and Lucy had a bowl of grits. Issues: the 'butter' was a soybean partially hydrogenated substance, they ran out of english breakfast teabags (and Andrew was shocked when there was no saucer for the teamugs), the cup of water for Lucy had a hair in it, the pancakes and strawberries weren't sweet, the syrup was well syrup not real maple syrup etc etc. My omlet was pretty good and Lucy loved the grits. However healthy eating it was not and we probably won't go back. And they don't take cards, just cash or cheque. So given that we never have cash we paid by cheque. How weird is that!

We then headed over to Hugh McRae Park for Earth Day. It was a disappointing turnout with just one big tent with lots of little stalls in it. Given the minimal level of recycling around here we shouldn't have been surprised but it was nice to have a Tidal Creek takeaway lunch under the pine trees.

Airlie Gardens was our next stop. A world of wonder far from the madding crowd. It is gorgeous at the moment with tulips and azaleas in bloom (though apparently looked even better 3 weeks ago). We wandered around and found a beautiful spot for Lucy's birthday picnic. There is a lovely man-made lake where the swans have 6 new baby cygnets (which we saw from distance). It's a beautiful place so we signed up for membership giving us unlimited access to the gardens and free tickets to concerts for a year.