I've tasted umpteen glasses of wine, several types of beer ...

Mudbrick Vineyard

I discovered a new alcoholic beverage today ... well, new for me that is. Rum and Ginger Beer ... it’s YUM! In fact, it’s MORE than yum .... and if the bus hadn’t been on such a tight schedule I’d have had MORE than one!

Leaving Auckland on the ferry

It’s definitely something I’ll be trying again!

There were 2 cruise ships in the Harbour. This was the biggest one.

It has been THE most fun day, despite the wet and woeful weather. WELLYTOWN kind of weather. It even threw in the wind when we were on Waiheke. Funny, all those ‘W’ words .... wet, windy, woeful Wellington and Waiheke .... though I don’t know if Wellytown was wet, woeful and windy today. Wouldn’t it have been strange if they had our sunshine and we had their wind!

Leaving Auckland in the distance

I have tasted umpteen glasses of wine, several types of beer and a variety of olive oils. I have needed to find many bathrooms and have cursed the bus driver more than once for his paranoid persistence in sticking to his schedule. 

Coming through the heads to Waiheke Island reminds me of the Knysna Heads

I have been buffeted around by the waves. I have been rained on. I have been blown away by the wind BUT ...... I have had HEAPS of fun!! I especially want to thank the organisers of the Grey Lynn Park Festival for CANCELLING the festival. If they hadn’t, I wouldn’t have discovered my new tipple!

I learnt all about Bordeaux type wines at Stony Ridge Winery, home to the famous Larose Wine, apparently one of the top ‘cult’ wines in the world. Sadly, because of the scarcity of this wine, we didn’t get to taste it but we did get to taste some of their other blends. Lunch here was also YUM and laid out in one of the Cellars for us .... very quaint!

.... and there's the Ginger Beer and the Rum!

Wild on Waiheke have their very own micro-brewery nestled in amongst the vines. If anyone’s responsible for my new found appreciation of rum and ginger-beer, it’s Wild on Waiheke. They never should have suggested trying their ginger beer with the addition of a tot of rum. 

Some of the carved fence posts at the Olive Oil Grove ... they've turned them into a chess set.

I very nearly had to steal a glass from here as that ‘punctually paranoid’ bus-driver drew our visit there to an end far sooner than we wanted it to be. I was still salivating at the taste of the rum and ginger beer and wondering if I should have another. Olive Oil was up next .... also delicious ... but nowhere near as yum as the rum and ginger beer!

Our last port of call was the Mudbrick Vineyard. We’ve been here before and it’s setting is just spectacular. It has the most magnificent views of Rangitoto and the city in the far distance. We tasted several wines here but I think by this stage, I was past appreciating the finer points of them.

I wasn’t past appreciating the gardens though and, despite the rain, still managed to get some great pics .... albeit with raindrops on the lens!

The ride home on the ferry was much smoother than the ride to Waiheke ... I’m wondering if it really WAS much smoother or if the senses were just a tad DULLED ..... hmmmmm.

Gorgeous views .... Rangitoto and in the far distance, my city.

Leaving Waiheke to head home

The smaller of the two cruise ships, the Amsterdam, heading out to it's next port of call

These are the lifts on the cruise ship in the harbour, she's called Millenium

A friend is NEVER a co-incidence in your life.

A friend is NEVER a co-incidence in your life. They enter your life at the right time ... be it for a brief moment or a lifetime ... to fulfill a need in you. They bring joy, laughter and tears and their impact on your life always leaves positives behind.

I’m so glad I have so many AWESOME friends in my life.

I’m having a gloomy sort of day. I’d been so looking forward to the Grey Lynn Park Festival this weekend ... and it’s been CANCELLED. Over 400 stall-holders have spent weeks preparing for this event. Bad weather has been forecast for Saturday and this has apparently caused the cancellation. 

Those white cotton-wool clouds spread across my sky this afternoon.

It’s a grrrrr sort of day and the grey gloomy weather is only adding to my mood. 

I’ve BEEN for a long ramble, HAD my caffeine fix AND a brioche - courtesy of Julia .... scoffed a bar of chocolate all on my lonesome .... but it hasn’t lifted my mood.

A baby Chocolat and a baby Shimmer .... they used to LOVE one another!

I was SO excited about participating in this festival.

Time to move on ... so I've been going through all my pics of the hound when she was a puppy .... that's been fun!

At least all the effort I’ve been putting in over the last few months won’t be wasted as it’s only 2 weeks to Fruit Bowl Craft Jam 2012. That’s an INDOOR 2-day market so there’s little chance of it being cancelled unexpectedly ... YAY!

She's LOVED coffee from the very beginning!

I also now get to go to Waiheke tomorrow on a wine tour. It’s a Christmas function that Gav and I were invited to but had to decline because of the Festival. Fortunately they can still accommodate us so I’m off to sample numerous varieties of Fruit of the Vine on the morrow. Better walk the hound early as I probably won’t be in any fit state to walk her on my return. 
Wine does that you know!

I was reading an article earlier about walkable cities ... ie cities where walking about them is safe, useful, comfortable and interesting. This line caught my eye and made me chuckle ... 
“Let’s have a moment of silence for all those who are stuck in traffic on their way to the gym to ride stationery bicycles.” 

She loves being brushed with the vacuum cleaner

I guess walking as much as I do makes the article more pertinent. There’s a lot to be said for re-inventing cities so as to make them more walkable. The article was specifically speaking about American cities which have effectively become no-walking cities ... but it’s probably applicable to most cities worldwide. Downtowns are easy to get to but NOT worth arriving at.  Cities are losing their sparkle. Creating a walkable city is not only socially and physically desirable but would also contribute to an increase in urban vitality. I’m all for it!

A trio of chocolate mousse!

This is what happens when you’re having a ‘grrrr’ kind of day .... you get distracted by all kinds of inane information on-line, some of which actually turns out to be kind of interesting.