Tuesday, May 19, 2009

More NZ stuff... food this time!

Ok so I still want to blog some stuff that happened in NZ before I forget too much of it. I'm sure there's a few more posts to go....

So this one is about some of the food we had. Below is what we had for the main course at the Shearer's Inn. Lamb and venison... two of the great products of having lush grazing on the west coast. The venison had a blueberry sauce I believe. It was delicious! And the accompanying Speight's wasn't too bad either.

In Able Tasman we had two lunches... this was lunch, part 2 at "The Anchorage". The delicious feast was purchased from a supermarket in Nelson, including Verker's salami, locally made cider and a cheesy bread roll with spectacular scenery while we waited for that ferry to turn up... it was a little late if I remember rightly.

Back at Kaiteri, we had dinner at what I think was called the blue whale. Or something. I'll correct that if I remember the name. Anyway, we were as close to be beach as we could be, and the food wasn't half bad despite the fact that we were almost the only people there (the locals apparently don't go out late at night on a Saturday before Anzac day). Despite all that, it was really quite good! They still cared. This is what my dessert looked like:

Lunch in Wanaka was a bit more disturbing. Wanaka is the slightly less touristy area where apparently you can do all the extreme sports but with less tourists. Still did seem very touristy. The road on the way after Haast gave us enough extreme driving, so it was time to eat some extreme food. Below is what was their pancake. We went to the pub as there seemed to be not much open, and what was open generally looked a bit wrong. We were also a little late. Anyway, after some trepidation I ordered the pancake. The bacon and banana pancake. I won't be doing that again. This is just proof that it was purchased. I did in fact eat it so I could say that yes I have done that once and won't be doing that again. I do not understand maple syrup on bacon and banana pancakes. I do not understand bacon in a sweet pancake.

Finally, some food that was art. In Christchurch, in a restaurant whose name escapes me entirely at the moment, we over indulged completely. This was one of the desserts.

Sunday, May 17, 2009

Thank you everyone!

Dear everyone,

Thank you all for the lovely presents you gave us above and beyond your presence at our wedding. We had a had a lovely dinner this weekend where we got to use some of those delightful gifts! The following two books were instrumental:


The entree section looked a bit like this:
And the dinner itself looked like this:

Sadly, we aren't as good at this as we should be because we forgot to use the splayds. There were heaps of other gifts, all very much appreciated. This is just what I managed to photograph this time around. I'm still happy that so many of you made the time to come celebrate with us!

Sunday, May 10, 2009

Cities around NZ

The larger cities we went to in New Zealand were Wellington, Nelson and Christchurch. Wellington was rather unique with a thriving sense of creativity. Nelson was also artistic but a bit different, and Christchurch looked like a little slice of Europe.

These first few photos are from Wellington:



This one is a view of Wellington from on top of Te Papa museum:

And this one is a panorama of Wellington from on top of Mount Victoria. We were very lucky with the weather on this one.

This is the main strip of Nelson:

This is Christchurch square from our Hotel room:
And a cute water wheel along the Avon River, which was apparently part of the early industry in Christchurch:

And here is part of the Arts Centre, near the Botanic gardens in Christchurch.
So... Christchurch is full of cute little parks and beautiful buildings, Nelson has a Cathedral (which gave it status as a City despite the lack of population) although the world of wearable art was also very cool, and Wellington is rather arty, vibrant and modern, with everything close by. I'd visit them all again.

Sunday, May 03, 2009

In and around Twizel

So this was the corridor in the original workers accommodation in Twizel. Does look rather homely, doesn't it?

After staying in Twizel, we went for a drive around the hydro electric lakes. I really should look up the names of them to remember while I can, but whatever it was called, this one is full:

So here is where two of the lakes meet. One is river water, the other is glacial meltwater. They don't really like mixing straight away, and you can see the difference in colour.

Finally, here is some of the view on the way to lake Tekapo. We could finally see the snow capped mountains! Yay!

Saturday, May 02, 2009

Abel Tasman national park

So, going backwards in the trip, here's some views in and around Abel Tasman national park.

Here's a view of Split Apple rock, just off the coast from Towers Bay in between Kaiteriteri and Marahau.

We were dropped off at Te Pukatea beach where we had a nice spot of lunch (part one), before taking a walk up to Pitt head. On the way up, you could get a full view of Te Pukatea:
After Pitt head, we made our way to "The Anchorage". This is the kind of view on the way.

Finally, after we were collected from the Anchorage after consuming Lunch (part two), we went for a drive back through Motueka and up Takaka Hill. This is the view from Takaka Hill back towards Motueka, with quite some zoom.
After this was back down the hill again and back to Kaiteri Lodge for the evening, including an attempt to wash clothes that ended up in quite a bit of damp clothing that became increasingly unpleasant through the rain we were going to face.

Some photos down the west coast

So what did we get to see despite the weather down the west coast? Here is a shot of Pancake Rocks in Punikiki. You can see the weird layering although I have a lot more photos of this area as well that show it a bit better.

Here is the main drag of Hokitika the next day before we went to check out the glaciers (and the vast amounts of rain!)

Somewhere in this photo is the terminal face of Franz Josef glacier. The big rock is Sentinel Rock.
Fox glacier, despite the main access road being closed due to the rain, was a little more visible.
That night we sought refuge in the "Hard Antler". We had some generous pub food and tasty beer, and were intrigued by the decor.

On the next day though, we decided to have breaky on the beach. This is Haast beach as we got to see it. A little colder, rainier and greyer than it could have been, but certianly an experience to enjoy.