Catch up and Blenheim Day 1

Hi everyone

I had just taken a look at the blog during some slow time at work and realized I have not posted anything since our trip to Queenstown and Milford Sound. Bad me!

Quite a bit has happened since then...  But to keep it in sequence:

We spent the night in Te Anau,  a little town on the lake whose entire existence is to be the gateway to Milford Sound.  If that road closed I think the town would slowly fade away.  The next morning we headed back up to Ashburton retracing our steps even stopping at the Queenstown MacDonalds for lunch and watching the Olympics opening ceremonies,  Mr Bean cracked the kids up (told you I’m a bad blogger) 

We took some pix on the way (as usual) and I love this one Matt took of me.  I look so cool!  Deceiving eh?

After that trip things quieted down quite a bit.  Our next vacation is not booked until the week before December and we were originally planning to do the camper van thing around part of North Island but have decided not to for two reasons.

1. It is incredibly expensive to rent a camper van for a week and to take the ferry across the Cook Straight.  
2. I booked a cruise...  we are officially in hock. 

I shall explain this in painful detail.  (feel free to skip this part and look at more pictures)  

Marie (Matt’s aunt and godmother) is coming to visit for the month of December (she gets here Saturday YAY!) and that brings our number of bodies up to 7.  

99.9% of camper vans in NZ are for 6 people or fewer.  The 8 and up ones are HUGE and EXPENSIVE.  So we are renting a beach house in Kaiteriteri (near Nelson) for a week instead (yeah poor us I know) 

And the cruise thing... well this is one of those you just can’t resist travel opportunities.  The timing was right (the end of our year) and there is a Canadian medical conference on board so Matt and I get some CME and it is out of Singapore and I WANT TO GO!! 

Ooops the princess just stamped her feet there, cough, sorry ‘bout that. 

Plus the teens are going for free (each a guest of a conference person) and I will not have to think of what to make for supper or argue with anyone over whose turn it is to do the dishes for two whole weeks!!  Amazing. 

But we do have to fly NZ to Singapore and then to Ottawa after, so the plane tickets are a little (ack) more.  But we get to see ASIA!!  How cool is that going to be?

But I digress...

The most recent excitement has been that Lise and Rob came to visit!  And it was great!

My running buddy Lise was going to come by herself but Rob decided she was not allowed to have that much fun without him (just kidding he really needed to see the birthplace of the Lord of the Rings and visit Hobbiton) and came too. 

So after much facebook messaging everything got sorted and they made it to Christchurch.  Leaving Ottawa in the middle of Superstorm Sandy.  Many thanks to all the great airline staff who got them here!  Lots of flight rebookings and running through airports but they made it.  But Rob’s luggage decided it liked Australia better and stayed for a few extra days. 

We picked them up in Chch and headed up to Blenheim to do wine country.  So are you thinking “wine country” with 4 kids? ewww.  

 WELL...  Just a week or two before and angel in the disguise of Leigh Wackrow (married to Murray one of the great docs I have been locuming for) offered to watch the children for a weekend.  My initial verbatim response was “Are you crazy?”  And after the shock wore off I quickly arranged for her to watch them the 1st weekend Lise and Rob were here. Life is good. 

So with rug rats safe and secure with Murray and Leigh the 4 of us headed up the old twisty Route 1 to Kaikoura to spend the night.  Kaikoura (as usual) was breathtaking.  

We stayed at a wonderful B&B, First Light Boutique, that was up on the ridge overlooking the beach, look one way: beach,  look the other way: snow capped mountains.   Our fabulous host, Murray,  had fresh giant crayfish (size of a nice lobster) for us to snack on when we got there (yum, of note, Rob is not big on seafood so I got his crayfish too! yay for me.) 

We then headed down into the village and had the best fish and chips ever at a patio pub.  After that we wandered a bit and found a coffee/wine bar where you got a little magic card that you could pop into the machine and it would deliver you a taste or a glass of wine to try.  There were two machines (one red and one white of course)  with five bottles each.  So while the boys sipped on coffees Lise and I tested the machines (and wine) out... 

After deciding on a bottle and doing some haggling for a glass for Rob we headed out.  But the cashier messed up a bit and came chasing us down the street, she forgot to add on the coffees and the card fee when I paid for the wine.  oops but all was good in the end. 

After our indulgence we decided to lay low for the evening and bought the makings for a dinner.    We headed back to our digs and enjoyed our dinner with a view, the wine and some very good chocolate from Canada. 

The next morning we got our act together and hit the road for Blenheim.  Lise had booked a wine tour at 10am so we needed to get out early.  But there were SEALS along the way and other photos ops so a few little stops were made.  As we were racing to get to the meeting point (and the minutes were counting down) we came up behind a van that was potting along and turned just when we needed to.  So as we pulled into the meeting point (our fab location for the night) we were right behind our touring van and our friendly driver (whose name I cannot remember, I blame the wine) 

We quickly ditched our van with the desk clerk at the Vintner’s Retreat and hopped into the “Wine Van” and went tasting!  It’s never too early for bubbly so our first stop was at No. 1 winery where they make true sparkling wine with a double fermentation process (as opposed to pumping CO2 through it as most bubbles are made now) but you cannot call it champagne,  that is a term that is only supposed to apply to sparkling wines made in the Champagne region of France.   But we are a really long way away from France so I’m going to say champagne anyway!!  We tried 4 different bottles of bubbly.  Lise and Rob bought one and poor Lise dropped her camera,  it did not stand a chance against the tile floor.  Not a good way to start the day.  

The next winery was Hunter’s and the wine there was ok (not great) but the grounds were very cool with grapevine arbours and lots of local artists sculptures around for sale (far too large for a suitcase so they got to stay there) 

At that point we met up with the rest of the people joining our tour and headed to St Clair’s winery.  YUM!  Bought 2 bottles there (good thing we were in a big van).

Then on to Allan Scott where we did not get any wine but Matt found a set of steak knives in the gift shop 

Then on to Wairau River winery for LUNCH.  Which was delish,   thankfully Matt could not finish his chowder so I got to have my lunch and part of his as well!

Then we headed to Nautilis.

Nautilis was very cool and Lise managed to wrangle a us a tour of the vinyard and facilities the next day.  More on that later, 

Our last winery was Giesen,  very nice but at this point were getting pretty "wined out" if you can believe that.  Remember we started at 10 am,

So at this point, that was a lot of wine... what to do what to do?? or drink?
Well... Beer of course!

Off to Moa Brewery which was created by one of the sons of Alan Scott (see the winery above).  They have many types of beer including a breakfast beer (we bought a case of that) a dark stout, a wheat beer and the usual pilners, pale ale etc.
One major difference between the wineries and the brewery.  No spittoon.  If you taste it you drink it,  what a way to finish the boozy part of the day.

But wait!  There's more!  After a big day of wine and beer,  what comes next but ...

CHOCOLATE.

We went to the best chocolate store ever!  They make it right there and there are lovely ladies walking around the store with samples.  Drooollllling at the thought.   I actually did not buy any chocolate for myself here, believe it or not but did get a bag of goodies for Leigh and Murray as anyone who looks after my kids for the weekend needs really good chocolate...

So you would think at this point we would be done... well the tour was.   Our lovely driver (name? name?) dropped us off at Vintner's Retreat.   This is the absolutely fabulous hotel Lise had booked for us to stay.  Thank you again Lise and Rob it was AMAZING.

We had our own little two bedroom house with a vineyard for the backyard (how cool is that?!) and a wonderful view of the mountains.

We decided (again) to eat in and Matt and Rob BBQ's up some yummy steaks and veggies Lise made a fab salad (I watched them cook) and we just chilled. So nice.

Day 2 coming up... (later, knowing me could be much later, sigh...)

Ok Day 2...

The next day we went back to Nautilis Vineyard and had a tour of the back area where they actually make the wine.   Making wine is a bit like making maple syrup from a volume point of view.  If you have ever tapped a tree as a kid and lugged gallons of sap to boil it down for hours to get a tiny little bottle or cup of syrup this is like the amount of volume of grapes (plus a whole lot more time and effort) to get a bottle of wine.

I have a whole new perspective on this and anyone who has dreams of owning a vineyard had better get a degree in chemistry and a few courses on industrial cleaning.  The place is spotless!

The rest of the day was pretty low key,  we drove back via Kaikoura, stopped in Christchurch and picked up Rob's luggage (yay!) and picked up the kids.
We did stop and look at the seals again (how could you resist!) and took lots more pictures of them.
All in all a great weekend.