Away days and naughtiness

On Monday and Tuesday we went to the Wairarapa. This is a wine growing region "over the mountains" as the crow flies, from where we live. Of course, we can't go "over the mountains" so had to take a long drive to get there. It was a lovely drive through the Manawatu Gorge. Our first stop was at the amazing Mount Bruce Wildlife centre. This centre preserves many of the wild birds and reptiles which are threatened by introduced mammal predators in NZ. I even got up close and personal to a Tuatara, a miniature dinosaur type reptile.

We stayed in the beautiful town of Greytown at a delightful hotel called the White Swan. There is a backstory now. The two other occasions we have visited this town, we have returned with large pieces of furniture. What started out as a "let's go and have lunch" ended up as "we need to organise a furniture transportation".

This time, we promised ourselves we would be good. We didn't need any more furniture. All was going well, until we drove back through Greytown after a putter around Martinborough. We stopped for a second look around a furniture restoration place.....then the inevitable happened. Oxygen was lost to our brains and we bought a large kitchen table, restored industrial design from the 1960s.......oh dear. It's big. We had to come home and measure our kitchen to see if it would fit. It does, just.

So we are now selling our current 10 year old dining room suite. When it arrives, we won't have any chairs to sit on, so will need to get some of those too. There will be no return trips to Greytown for a LONG time.

Here are some pictures of our naughty adventure.

Driving through the Manawatu Gorge

Tuatara

Kaka

Takahe

Martinborough region through a heat haze

Cheese shop Featherston

Footnote: Driving through the Manawatu Gorge, seeing a Tuatara and "Manukura" the white Kiwi, count as experiences 5, 6 and 7 for 2015