Brandon O'Brien

Tuesday, November 26, 2019 @ 10:00 PM in 2019 New Zealand

Day 3

We flew from Wellington to Christchurch this morning, departing around 9:30am and getting into Christchurch at 10:30. Air New Zealand is amazing and runs like buses would in most cities. If you're flying domestic, you don't need to go through any kind of security checkpoint (which blew our minds when we just walked right up to our gate from entering the airport). The fares are also extremely cheap. This flight for example was $29. A similar duration flight in the US would have easily been 3x that much.

After we landed in Christchurch and got our car, we went to the Air Force Museum of New Zealand and checked that out for a while. Mike and Anne love checking out places like that and it was a good way to spend an hour or so (we had to wait a little while to check into our hotel anyway). There was a group of veterans at the museum all meeting up for some tea. It seemed like they made that a regular tradition and was neat to see.

On the way to our hotel we stopped for a snack at a place called the Fermentist. They had a lot of gastropub style food and we opted for some fried cauliflower and beer. When enough time passed that we could check into the hotel, we drove over there and got checked in. The photos and reviews on Hotels.com made it seem like it was going to be a really nice place, but we could tell upon entering the lobby that it wasn't quite going to be the case. We got into our room and were greeted with a really bad smell, which we later determined was caused by the shower shooting water onto the ground and then making its way into the bedroom carpet, keeping it soaked. We ended up opening all the windows while we went out to walk around Christchurch.

We stopped for more snacks and drinks at a place called Fiddlesticks, then walked over to the botanic gardens, where the roses were in full bloom, and then went to the Canterbury Museum which had a lot of native artwork.

We decided to get some Thai to go and ended up eating on the patio of our hotel room. The Thai was pretty good, but lacking a lot of spiciness.

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Tags: new zealand, wellington, christchurch, honeymoon

Posted from: New Zealand

Monday, November 25, 2019 @ 10:00 PM in 2019 New Zealand

Day 2

Sam and I woke up with a plan to go for a run. We got started and ran down to the south side of the area where we saw the beaches on the Cook Straight. It definitely reminded me of some of the towns you'd see in Northern California along the coast. We continued to loop around and ended up running through a really cool little downtown in Island Bay. We weren't ready for how steep some of the hills here were. We're used to some steep roads and trails in Santa Fe, but holy cow, these were to the point where you were really just walking. It's amazing cars don't just go flying out of control down the streets here.

After our run, we drove up north to Paraparaumu beach where we had brunch at Marine Parade Eatery. We checked out the beach (which was full of driftwood) and then started a drive over to the Martinsborough winery area. We had two options to get over to Martinsborough... 1) Backtrack an hour and then drive more established roads. 2) Take the mountain roads (Akatarawa Rd) and save ourselves a ton of miles of driving. We ended up taking option #2 which in retrospect was probably a pretty poor choice.

The mountain road we took was a very narrow one lane with extremely steep grades and cliffs on either side. This made any attempt at passing almost impossible, but at least we only saw one other car the whole drive. Fortunately we didn't die and made it out of the mountains and into the plains of the wine country. The first winery we stopped at was called Poppies. We did tasted some samples and then got a bottle to share along with some cheese and bread. They had a really nice seating area overlooking the vineyards and it was a really nice experience.

From there, we went to a winery called Schubert where we sampled some more wine and bought a few bottles. We joked with the guy serving our samples that we were on a shared honeymoon and I don't think he knew how to take it, lol. We also told him how we got here via the Akatarawa Rd and he said we were extremely brave. The locals avoid that way at all costs due to frequent landslides and closures. I guess we did get really lucky! In chatting with him, he was talking about how a lot of Chinese people were buying up vineyards in the area as a way to get their cash out of China, but they weren't taking care of the vines properly and were generally running the vineyards they purchased into the ground.

We should have taken that last point a little closer as we were on our way to our last vineyard of the day, Vynfields Wine. We pulled into the place and noticed all the vines were either dormant or dead. This was a stark contrast to all of the other vineyards we stopped at and saw along the way. The second clue was that we couldn't find a dedicated parking area anywhere. We just kinda parked by the big white house that we assumed was the winery. The third clue was when we got in the winery and couldn't find anyone to help us. We called around a little bit and finally an elderly Chinese man who couldn't speak any English came out and showed us a list of some wines we could buy (no samples here). Between the four of us, we sampled a red, a white and a Rose. The red and whites had definitely turned and the Rose was extremely harsh. We didn't even finish the wines and left rather disappointed. (Note: I just checked and apparently the place is under new management as of early 2022 and hopefully has turned their operation around).

Rather than eating out tonight, we thought we'd get some groceries and cook something back at the Airbnb. We picked up some meat to grill, some asparagus, mushrooms and fries. It was a pretty nice dinner which we had with some beers.

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Tags: new zealand, honeymoon, wineries, wellington

Posted from: New Zealand

Sunday, November 24, 2019 @ 10:00 PM in 2019 New Zealand

Day 1

We landed in Auckland around 9:40am local time, then had about two hours to kill before our 11:30 departure for Wellington. Anne got us into the Air New Zealand lounge where we had some snacks and a beer. The lounge was really nice and it felt great to be out of the plane seat. Our flight to Wellington arrived around 12:35pm, which gave us most of the day to get settled in and explore a little bit.

The first thing we did was get the rental car and check into our Airbnb to drop off our bags. The place had a theme of a 50's diner, complete with ice cream and malt to make some milkshakes. After we got settled in, we got in the car and headed down into Wellington proper. First we stopped at a place called Choice Bros to get a beer and snack. I was eager to try as many New Zealand style pilsners as I could, so I had my first one here. New Zealand pilsners are pilsners that are heavily hopped with all the fruity and tropical hops that New Zealand is known for.

After we finished at Choice Bros, we went down to the waterfront and stopped at a place called St. Johns Bar where they had some outdoor seating over looking the harbor. We got a drink there and hung out for a little while, even though it was overcast and cold. Fortunately this was almost the only day during the entire trip that we didn't have really nice weather (which is really odd for New Zealand).

We started to get hungry so we set out to find a real dinner. We tried to get into one restaurant but it was going to be a pretty long wait. Across the street from that restaurant was Mt. Vic Chippery, a pretty typical fish n chips joint. We decided to check it out and were treated with some really delicious fish and chips. After dinner we were all feeling pretty beat from the long travel day, so we went back to the Airbnb and called it a night.

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Tags: new zealand, honeymoon, wellington

Posted from: New Zealand