……Tuesday 3rd – Wednesday 4th November
Day 16
Up at 7am (next time, can I do a holiday that doesn’t require me to get up at the crack of dawn regularly?). Caught the bus into town to get a train to Featherston – a wee town in the Wairarapa, where we got picked up for our wine tour of the Martinborough area. There were only ten people on the tour (one of whom didn’t drink alcohol) and we were a reasonable mix of ages and nationalities. First up – coffee in a cafe in Martinborough and then we drove out to the Alana Estate, where several wines were sampled. Unless you were Bobby, who just necked the first sample without waiting for all the guff about swirling it about and holding it in various parts of your mouth to get the different tastes. The rest of us were polite and did the swirling and sniffing bit. And the drinking bit. No spitting here – we were going to drink all of it (no matter how much we didn’t like it). Next up was Muirlea Rise; a really small boutique vineyard, with a very entertaining owner (Shawn). He did us the tour, showed us his shiny new bottling doodah (we all went oooh). He was very proud of his vines and his idiosyncratic approach to making wine, which basically went: it’s different every year – some are good, some are not so good. If you like it, buy some. If you don’t, that’s ok too. He was very enthusiastic, and his wine was lovely, so we bought some – a very rich pinot noir; almost port-like. Lovely. After two vineyards it was lunchtime, so back to The Village Cafe in Martinborough for a selection of absolutely delicious local and other NZ foods – big fat olives, salmon, peppers, hams, fresh made bread and more wine (and coffee). Feeling fat and dozy, like dormice, we waddled off to the bus and Te Kairanga vineyard. Which we were a bit disappointed with. Bobby was really happy that they were all reds, but on sampling six or seven, I couldn’t find one I liked and neither could Bobby or Rob. There was tipping of wine and no finishing of samples – blee. Last but not least was Murdoch James Estate, which was very picturesque and had a big proper cellar with barrels stacked way high. Their wine was good, although by this time, you could have given me cat’s piss and I’d have drunk it. Their wine was not cat’s piss – it was very nice. Then it was back to a wee cafe in Martinborough for coffee and cheeseboard, which was thoroughly enjoyable, and then back to Featherston for the train to Welly. We all dozed off on the train – sleepy, full of cheese and slightly pissed. To round off our gourmet day, we ordered pizza from Dominoes and watched Star Trek. They do takeaway pizza orders online! How cool! How easily pleased am I?! I very much enjoyed the day bimbling round vineyards and tasting stuff and eating nice food, although we started off doing the whole “I taste a hint of passionfruit” and ended up on “that’s crap. Next!” So civilised.
Day 17
On our own in Wellington. Clare and Bobby entrusted us (well, Rob) with setting their house alarm and locking up before we caught the bus into town to go to Te Papa. We had a bit of a lie in, so didn’t get into town until about 11am. We planned to sort of look at other bits of town, but ended up spending most of the day in Te Papa. I do like this museum – Brian and I spent some time wandering round it in 2006 and enjoyed it then too. Pleasingly for Rob, they had the colossal squid on display in a big tank (a bit like some important dead person lying in state). It was big, I’ll give it that. The short movie clip of how they caught it and got it back to the museum was interesting. I went online and build my very own virtual colossal squid. Mine is called Bob and he’s wandering the deep oceans. Occasionally I log in and see how he’s doing. We were impressed by the skeleton of a blue whale hanging above us in one of the display areas. I like the geology area too, with lots of information about volcanoes and earthquakes. We also went to look at the big shock absorbers in the basement of the museum – this is not as exciting as it sounds, but from an engineering and geology point of view it was informative.
In the evening we took Bobby and Clare out for dinner to the Ban Mai Thai Cafe and had some tasty thai food. Clare suggested we go to Strawberry Fair Cafe for pudding; I’m glad I’d kind of said bugger the diet for the holiday, cos we had puddings that were absolutely huge and very very nice. Big fat pavlova with cream and passionfruit and a spun sugar creation sitting on the top – the blokes just thought it looked like a tit on a plate (it was sort of boob-shaped). But it was yummy. Again, an early-ish night as we were catching the 7.20am train from town. Bobby offered to drive us there – bless him. Just as well he works at the train station – it just meant he got to work a bit earlier than usual.
