A series of fortunate events – Part 1
By 
It’s been a few days since our last post so I’m going to release a series of them, I say series because while I had planned our sleeps, there’s no way I could have planned the outcome.
Jan 14:
We leave Welling with worry in our hearts. The ferry crossing is supposed to be both magical (due to the views of the Marlborough Sounds) and terrifying (due to the waves that have been know to get 7 metres high!). So when we woke up to rain, we were both quite concerned.
Turns out, the ferry is more like a cruise, restaurants, observations decks, movie theatres and a playground. I watched Bohemian Rhapsody (which was great), and Miranda did some journaling. Needless to say, the 1 metre swells barely jostled the large ferry and all was well in the world. The views did deliver.
We picked up our partner for the next 12 days, a hot pink Yaris, and went on our way to Blenheim for sparse foods and wine!
We asked at our hotel for a reco on wine tour as one does in Marlborough (most NZ wine is produced here) – Bike2Wine came highly recommended and we chose to be picked up #drinkallday
Jan 15:
On our pick up, we met a couple from Brisbane who A) confirmed our choice to not spend time in Brisbane and B) told us we must do the Abel Tasman Charters vs an all day kayak tour (Thank you random couple – more on that later).
Biking through wine country was… hard work. Who wants to bike through the hot countryside?? Ok I’m mostly kidding, we biked from 10:30 – 4:00 stopping at no less than 9 wineries (we didn’t even hit anywhere close to half of those available). The region is beautiful, mostly flat, the roads are lined with rows of grape vines and the there are mountains on every side. But we found a great many delicious wines, some of which are now coming along for the ride (and may make their way to Australia for our upcoming cruise).
We also enjoyed a 7-course fancy dinner if booked a month ago (the secret dinner I mentioned in the first post). We enjoyed it, and I met a dog (bonus!)
More in the next post.
So for those keeping track:
- The hotel suggested Bike2Wine
- Brisbanians suggested Abel Tasman Charters (which we booked)
