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The Leslieville of Oceania
It’s funny, for as long as Miranda and I have been together, she’s always longed to spend time in Leslieville. Any time we drive near it, she speaks of her old apartment, her favourite coffee spot, her favourite cheese shop. It’s weird. Or at least I thought it was weird, until now. Leaving New Zealand has been tough. It’s been less than 24 hours and I miss it, a lot. It’s the type of place that just gets you. From the kind people who reside there, to the laid back lifestyle (Miranda was SO laid back there), to the beautiful scenery anywhere you look, to the wildlife everywhere! It really…
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A series of fortunate events – Part 3
Welcome to Part 3 of our fortunate events. If you haven’t read Part 1 or Part 2, you may want to. After our day cruise of Abel Tasman, and our nature spotting of Sea Lions, we were apprehensive to use our one free day to drive 2 hours north just to see the “best beach in NZ”, but we had nothing better to do other than hike or be beachy (and I have trouble standing still when I’m traveling). So off we went. Jan 18: We hit the road, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches in tow (that VIP peanut butter factory experience has paid us back in spades!). We head…
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A series of fortunate events – Part 2
Alright. So we drank some wine, and got some tips, so what..? (Read Part 1 if you have no idea what I’m on about) Jan 16: We drove to Marahau, passing Nelson, perhaps the prettiest place on the planet. We also stopped at a few breweries (after Miranda kissed the ground), had VIP treatment at the peanut butter factory, I bought a new beer snobby hat (woot!) Jan 17: Abel Tasman Charters. Number 1 ranked thing to do in Abel Tasman – well deserved. We were 2 of 8 people on a tour of Abel Tasman national park. We saw a bird island (we heard some birds), a sea lion…
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A series of fortunate events – Part 1
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…
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Ok New Zealand, it’s enough already!
We’re behind on the blog, we’re sorry. But it’s not our fault! Every time we mean to get an update together about all the amazing stuff we’ve been seeing and doing, something even more amazing happens. We wake up every day thinking the day before was surely the peak of amazing, and go to bed every night totally shocked that we’ve seen something equally or even more awesome. Like last night when we were about to go to sleep feeling like we’d had a pretty good day. We’d spent it driving though the southern Alps, which were totally spectacular. After hours of beautiful driving, we stopped for the night in…
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Driving Miss Miranda
Miranda has been a trooper in sitting on the left while I keep up with local traffic and the rolling and curvy hills that is New Zealand. But today we had an incident. Driving through the mountains en route to Nelson we encountered a very windy road. Needless to say, upon arrival in Nelson we needed some down time. This included not moving, smelling salts of some kind, and eventually lying down. I hope she’ll be alright. Whatever happens, I’m here for her. And I’ll happily drive her through the rest of South Island. Note to future self, doing anything on your phone through the mountain is ill-advised. #NoOneLeftBehind #SeaSick…
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Nothing to ‘wine’ about on this spectacular day!
80% of New Zealand’s wine is produced in Marlborough. We almost bypassed this stop because while I love white wine, Sauvignon Blanc is rarely my pick. And in Canada, NZ wine = Sauv. But thank goodness we didn’t, because a) seems this area produces amazing Rieslings, and b) on my growing list of ‘favorite days’ this turned out to be one more for the top of the list! The base town for the Marlborough region (Blenheim) was pretty Bleh, so we weren’t entirely expecting the day to be so spectacular. A great reminder about judging a book by its cover… and the weather was perfection, which helped get us off…
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Brooklyn, the Brooklyn of New Zealand
So there’s a place named Wellington, and in that place there’s a place called Brooklyn. You might as well call the whole place Brooklyn. This place is so hip it hurts. There’s a barbershop on every corner and an espresso bar on every other corner. Every restaurant is also a brewery. Every brewery has dogs. Laundromats are bars. Everyone has the super power of individuality. Everyone has tattoos. You must cross the street as a diva. Needless to say, it’s a hip place. Breweries were visited. Streets were crossed. Art was admired. Street art was observed… It’s been a nice few days, but it’s time to hop along. Tomorrow we…
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For the birds! A birdless tour through Zealandia, a bird sanctuary.
Friends, by now you’ve likely caught on that I hate birds. Perhaps I’m still scarred by the twice we owned birds when I was a kid. Both ended badly. And in my first apartment, our balcony was overrun by pigeons. I was constantly awoken by their cooing sounds. No amount of netting prevented them from nesting there. And I’ll never forget the sight of my roommate shooing one from our living room with a broom. My sister can further attest to a driving moment where we believed we would die – in part, because a bird nearly flew into our windshield, and then because of the laughter that ensued. And…
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Speed round!
Ok so we’ve been busy, and I’ve been lazy. Here’s a speed round of stuff from your present / our past (cause we live in the future now). We drove north. We had the best fruit, ever. Boysenberries. Their season is apparently a week, this week. My only previous experience with boysenberry was in yogurt form. Fresh was far superior. Earwigs like them too. #bugnoise Cambridge has a horse walk of fame, of course. Trotting down Mane Street and back in a horseshoe-like pattern with our salt-lick-like gelato kept our throats from going hoarse. But that’s enough horsing around. We saw bad local live music at a hostel / bar.…
