Random post-holiday post #3

If you're going to Noumea on holiday it's a very good idea to make sure your credit card has a pin number. Otherwise you could, just possibly, arrive at the Youth Hostel on your first night, hand over your (nice empty) credit card and be told it doesn't work.

In this situation it's useful to have another credit card on you, even if you know it's pretty much full. Hand it over anyway and, if you're lucky, it'll be accepted. And you'll be using cash for the rest of your stay.

Not that I'm telling you this from experience, necessarily. Just saying... (as they say).

*Ahem*.

My birthday lunch, 2009:
Prepackaged couscous salad from the supermarket at the port. Approximately AU$3.11 and actually rather good.Especially as it was eaten here: I thought I'd have something special for dinner but the supermarket was closed when I got back to town in the afternoon. And so were all the restaurants in town. The corner shop just down from the hostel was open for a couple of hours in the evening so I bought some chocolate biscuits there in lieu of the french pastries I'd planned. They only had New Zealand chocolate biscuits. Of course.

Oh and the slap up birthday lunch with the boys planned for the 27th? It never happened as their ship dropped Noumea from its itinerary...