Rotorua - A Town of Bookstores

A perk in my new job is the chance to go to places with the boys I support.  Saturday we went to Rotorua for them to experience the Skyline gondola ride and The Luge!  The Saturday crowd was not that huge.  Must be the Royal visit happening a few towns away, Cambridge that is.  A few hours up on the ridge and it was time for us to go down to Rotorua, one of New Zealand's main tourist destinations and the Maori cultural capital.

I noticed that the town has a bookstore in almost all corners of the CBD.  And that's not counting the national chain Whitcoulls.  These are homegrown ones with a quaint ambiance and the musty smell of books.  The kind of smell that's so heavenly for me.  I've always loved the smell of books and magazines.  I remember when I was a young boy and since my home was just across the local college, I would spend countless hours in the library.

I'm not very familiar with the number of educational institutions in Rotorua, something I think might warrant having heaps of bookstores.  But it was heartening nevertheless to find these bookstores and hopefully being patronised by the students too. That's just teacher in me.  As a reader of books, magazines and anything and everything that's written, it was gratifying to see titles that are not commonly found in the bigger bookstores.

It was a pity I didn't have enough time to browse the other bookstores.  The limited time I had was spent looking for free parking space and finding a cheap place to eat.  For a Saturday afternoon, it was difficult to find a place to park that was free.

With us being on a tight budget and me wanting to buy a book or books, food was not a very welcoming option.  In the end, we decided on going the fast-food route courtesy of Burger King.  I know what you're thinking but, hey I wanted to fill my brain more than my stomach.  That's my Saturday, how was yours?