Greytown...down the road from Martinborough (down the road by Canadian standards..."GOD that's a long drive" if you're a Kiwi (about 20 minutes). :) This is such a nice little town and such a beautiful area. This is one of the areas we are looking into to buy. We had lunch at this little "French" bakery and it was EXCELLENT. French onion soup and a silky chocolate tart that was to DIE for, oh Vince says I am to tell you all that in the middle of wine area he found boutique beer, it IS really nice beer but leave it to a man.

Roight as the Aussies would say, I'd better think about work...no lets not and say we did...will talk to you all soon :)

Mim

This is the inside of the wine centre in Martinborough on Sunday morning. It was jam packed and through the back is a little 'market'. I bought some jam, which once we got it home turned out to be more pectin than fruit, but no worries, I am going to get back into making my own.

I apologise for not having any vineyard photos, I kept forgetting my damn camera. We are going to Carterton (just down the road) on Sunday to look at houses, will take more pictures of the area then. We were so taken with the Wairapapa that we are looking at the logistics of re-locating there. It is on the train line and would be an hour and a bit commute into Wellington, with the train dropping us off out the front of our building basically (its almost on top of the station).

Last week, on about Thursday, Vince and I decided to get away for the weekend. As I hadn't been to the wine country yet, and he's had to listen to me grumping about missing the Barossa Valley in South Australia (an hour outside of Adelaide, used to go there A LOT and visit vineyards and drink really good wine), we decided to go to Martinborough which is this teeny little town in the Wairapapa and the hub of the wine area.

The picture is of the Martinborough hotel. It used to be a complete dump and then some wealthy real estate agent/developer from Wellington swanned out to Martinborough in his flash car, bought it and spent $4.5 million NZ doing it up. This story was from the slightly embittered French cafe owner across the street. That was an interesting cafe. The food was/could have been quite good actually but there was something just a bit off...the first thing was the music, Julio Iglesias, doing COVER VERSIONS of everything from Celene to Foreigner, it was truly henious.

We started with soup, and I ordered mushroom and I swear it was probably the best mushroom soup I have ever tasted. Thick and dark with LOADS of mushrooms and wine but it was cold. Vince's was leek and potato and it was also delicious but not hot enough either. For my main I ordered poisson (a small chicken like bird) (half a poisson actually) and it was served with 'pommes frittes' and vegetables. The 'pommes frittes' (fries) were instant ones, I swear to God. The poisson was *really really good* but the fries, although cooked perfectly, hot and crispy STILL came out of a bag.

Dessert and the dessert wine in particular was excellent but the apple tart thing should have been heated up.

Vince is back from his walk and I feel guilty for not being healthy and going. I am going to go with him tomorrow I am just SUCH a morning person ( I can hear you all laughing from here).

We bought half a dozen bottles of assorted wine, 2 bottles of very expensive sticky's, some cab sav (just divine) and a bottle of traminer (which is just nectar) and some sav blanc. I do like my wine.

Morena everyone (Maori for good morning). It is 6am here, on Wednesday morning, (Tuesday afternoon for the North Americans). Why am I up so early? See the guy to the left? He's decided he isn't getting enough exercise (fair enough) but has decided to get up reeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeally early and go for walks. Which means I can't sleep. I woke up at 5:30am and that was it, Vince isn't in bed with me so I"m wide awake. I thought I'd better post some pics and have a chat to you all! This was taken at Makara beach and I have some new photos of the weekend we spent in Martinborough.

Looking towards the south island...

The beach at Makara

More pics of the farm...its hard to capture it in a way that does it justice...

Yesterday was a beautiful Sunday here in Wellington, makes up for the entirely shitty winter. We drove out to Makara and this is the view from the driveway of one of Vince's son's friends father's 'lifestyle block'. It means that you can have livestock and room to have pets. Makara is beautiful and about a half hour out of Wellington...

Vince and company....look Jaye he's wearing his favorite shirt!!! :) Parties are funny things, sometimes people eat everything you put on the table and other times they eat next to nothing and you end up eating party leftovers for a week!

Everything was eaten last night which is great!

I had a party last night...went very well. I didn't drink much this time...unlike last time when I had to take myself off to bed while telling everyone to stay put and enjoy themselves :)

I'm always a bit self-concious taking pics at my parties so these are just very quick snaps...

Made a killer curry....

A rather gray day in Wellington, but nice and mild, spring is definitely coming, thank GOD. This is Somes Island which served as a quarantine and internment station. Those people who had German or Italian names, regardless of where they were born were interred on this island during the second world war, some for the entire duration of war. After that it was a quarantine area for animals before they were let into New Zealand properly...to insure of course that they didn't spread disease...

My road is directly behind that power pylon that you see in the picture...This is a partial view of the Hutt Valley from the top of Wainui Hill...

Green, misty and lots of sheep....hmmm wonder where we are? I know...NEW ZEALAND! Where the men are men and the sheep are nervous...(can hear you groaning from here...so old its moldy). :)

Very very pretty today, we were in Wainuiomata...I live at the base of the hill you go over to get there...

I didn't get a good shot of all the gorse growing on the hillsides. It is almost completely yellow in some places...an introduced "pist" as the Kiwi's say... :)

The Nikau tree...or more correctly a palm...that grows the furtherest away from the equator...

A shot of the valley where we were walking...

The boys....following the leader :)

Here we are....Ben was making us laugh when Alexandar took this picture....was a good walk but I had too many clothes on...was warm when we finished...

The Koru...the inside of the furled fern. This features heavily in Maori imagery, mythology and story telling. The Koru is a sign of new beginnings and prosperity...(see Maori representation above...)

The park where we went walking...must buy myself some good sturdy tramping shoes...

Happy Father's Day! The world's most handsome man and his equally good looking sons. They are laughing at me (dig Ben's rolled eyes) because I said, just as I snapped the shutter...."Say....Canada is better than New Zealand!!!"

:) :)

Ben and his new best friend, Jess the cat. She has been sleeping in his bed and enjoying being even more spoiled than usual. I've tried having her sleep in my bed but it doesn't work. I wake up with allergy attacks...bummer. But she loves Ben so it all works out well...

Today was Father's Day in New Zealand so Vince got to open his pressies and be waited on hand and toe by yours truly. I bought him Yves St. Laurent cologne, (Live Jazz...very nice) and the boys bought him movie vouchers.

We went walking in Rumataka park today, as can be seen by the above pictures. I made pancakes with real maple syrup, bacon and sparkling wine for dinner. All in all a great day. Vince is playing Monopoly with the boys... :)

Welcome to the big move! This was the huge truck that pulled up to Vince' s place on Wednesday. We got called on Tuesday afternoon by the moving company who informed us that contrary to our wishes we had removalists but NO PACKERS. We had a lot of fun running around getting packing material and then packing frantically to be in time for the truck on Wednesday morning. They were only an hour and half late so it wasn't too bad. The moving blokes were fantastic and got a case of beer for their pains :)