The Awesomeness Known as Chartwell

As I'm walking home, sipping my Wendy's (not the burger joint) spearmint thickshake, I finally decide that this is a topic interesting enough to be posted about.

Anyway, disregarding the above phrase, you probably were thinking perhaps something along the lines of "Andy doesn't seem to have much to do other than go to school and play games at home it seems, he hasn't really talked about much else...", right? Well it's true that I haven't been talking much about what stuff I can do in daily life here, since playing paintball is a rare occasion. But as for the idea that there's absolutely nothing to do around here...

Heh, why would I make this post if I wasn't going to talk about one of the best things I have available here?

Anyway, just a mere 15 minutes walking or 5 minutes biking from my house here in Hamilton, there's a large shopping center known as Westfield Chartwell. Now since Westfield is just another annoying huge corporation, like AMC with movies, everyone just calls the place Chartwell. There's the mall itself, then there's the many things directly next to it. There's a library, gas station, like 10 other types of stores, including an office supply store, butchery, asian grocery store and...Curves? I thought that was only in America...But disregarding that pause, the best part would definitely be the inside of Chartwell. These photos won't be too good for describing because the place is big, but it's better than nothing...

There are a large amount of shops, as well as a full grocery store on the first floor, and a quite good food court on the second floor. The restaurants or other food booths that they have up there are... McDonalds, Subway, Pronto Pasts(never heard of it), some Thai place, Starbucks, this citrus shake or something place, and my 2 favorites: Umi Sushi and the Gelatopia. Why are those my favorites? let's see here... The gelatopia has really good gelato with quite a few different flavors, and a small cup of it which is still a nice size costs the equivalent of around, say...2 american dollars. But the best place is Umi. They always have fresh sushi out every day, and you pick out what you want with tongs, put it in a little plastic container, pay, and enjoy. The various types of sushi cost anything from 1.30-1.90 NZ, which is...say...80-1.20 american or something...I'm probably quite wrong, I'm terrible with exchange rates. Still, it costs a little more per piece than what you'd maybe find at Sakura or any other japanese place in America, but the quality and SIZE of the sushi makes up for it. Take a look...

You probably can't get a very good comparison of size, but I'll see if I can make it clearer... The 2 salmon and 1 prawn sushi I'd say are about the length of your thumb, and width and thickness of 2 of your fingers stacked on top of the other. Compared to sushi you may find at other places, that is GIANT. And it's really good sushi too, not just something really cheap. The rice is very flavorful, they don't overdo the wasabi in my opinion, and the salmon/prawns taste really good too. But that's not the biggest of the sushi...Those 2 rolls, let's see here...Make a circle with your thumb and middle finger...The size of the circle with the border being the OUTSIDE edge of your fingers is probably the best size comparison for those. Now THAT is some big sushi rolls, I can't even eat one of them all at the same time, and I never thought that would happen with sushi.

Next up on the list, is the Starbucks. I've only been there once, but it's very similar to the ones you see back home. The only thing is, they don't have peppermint syrup....I guess the next time I'll have a Venti-iced-mocha-4x vanilla-2x peppermint will be when I get back home, hehehe. Oh, and I never talked about this before, but the chocolate things here, like the chocolate muffin and chocolate Frappucino that I had yesterday, are not as sweet as chocolate in the US. It's a touch less sweet, and you taste a touch more of the plain chocolate flavor, though it's not like the flavor of dark chocolate...It's hard to describe.

The entire area has a lot of shops that I'm interested in...They've got a smaller asian grocery store inside, EB games, a bookstore, movie store, though not as many clothing places than the amount you would see in a US mall...Yeah, there's actually quite a bit to do there. My final thing I'd like to say is that I'm glad the Wendy's here has spearmint shakes, because those taste really good. Actually, my younger host sister works there currently, and I got a photo just for the heck of it...

Annalise, my host sister, is on the right. I got this shot right before Chartwell closed for the night. This is the Wendy's that is the ice cream/smoothie/shake place. It's quite good, and as I said, they have spearmint shakes. AWESOME.

Well, I guess there's nothing more for me to say about Chartwell. Thanks for reading, and...um...I'm terrible with closing lines, hehehe... Ja....bye then!