Waiheke Island Vineyard Tour

Date: Sunday, 22nd Jan 2006

It’s Sunday night and I’m back in my Langham room. I’ve had my lovely warm shower and a delicious steaming peppermint tea right beside me – must tell you guys about the awesome day I’ve had!

Ok it started off me waking up at 9:30am, rushed to get ready (cos I ALWAYS leave morning prep to the last minute) and headed downstairs to board the Langham “Courtesy” bus at 10am. The weather was absolutely AMAZING – seriously, today is the best "weather" day I’ve experienced ever since travelling to NZ.

I arrived Downtown and was extremely hungry, so I thought I’d pop by Muffin Break and get myself a Bacon/Egg/Cheese Muffin and a LARGE Cappuccino. The guy who served me seriously looked like Bobby from work. No joke! It was so funny cos I instantly SMS’d Bobby about the guy and he persisted that I take a photo of the Muffin Break guy! Hence after much waiting (cos the guy kept dashing to the back to clean or something) and trying really hard to seem as if I was interested in taking a photo of the “Muffin stand” instead of him, I finally got a shot! Haha – check it out and let me know what you guys think =)

I then met JL, Adrian, Mark and Christian down at the ferry terminal where we were about to embark on our adventure of the Waiheke Island Vineyard Tour. I was really excited and the tour turned out to be only $85 (which included ferry return trip, lunch, visit to 3 vineyards via luxury coach and free wine tasting). So we boarded the ferry at 11am – funny thing is, Christian and Mark suffer from Motion Sickness. Fortunately Christian was ok for most of the trip, but poor Mark went pale and watery eyes halfway through! He had to keep constantly munching on mints and drinking heaps of water. Quite interesting to watch actually – never knew anyone who suffered from it ;)

So our first Vineyard stop was at Stonyridge – really nice place and we were welcomed with a glass of their white wine. The wine was really strong and different! I’m not much of a wine person, so I have no idea what I was looking out for when I tasted it but I’m assuming it was good =) Our tour chic then took us around the vineyard and explained the origins, how the wine is created etc.. and we ended with a nice glass of red wine and yummy sandwich lunch at the end.

Then it was off to Mudbrick vineyard – it was so beautiful! The place is gorgeous because it’s high up and you can have lunch overlooking most of Waiheke Island. Seriously if I had to choose a place to get married – this would be it ;) Our tour guy was also very interesting and he originally lived in Sydney, Newton so we had a bit to chat. He moved to NZ 12.5 yrs ago. At this vineyard, we were given two glasses of wine again. So that’s 4 half-glasses – Jenn getting slightly tipsy *grinz*!

Interesting fact: We saw this run-down green shed house-like thing near a beach that sold for $14million – no shit! The place wasn’t bigger than a garage!

Anyways, our third stop was Peninsula Estate where we were greeted with this really nice Rose wine – pale pink in colour but absolutely delicious with less alcohol content. Definitely my fav of the day ;) This was a quick tour which ended in a nice glass of red wine, crackers and cheese. That’s a total of 6 half-glasses = 3 full glasses = half bottle! Yep, I was sleepy by then!
Overall I would rate the tour 8/10 – it was really fun and educational!

When we returned on our ferry trip – we headed out to “No.1” Chinese restaurant for dinner and ordered – the food was yummy, cheap and in HUMUNGA-WUNGA serving sizes (I must say I didn’t finish mine – seriously, my dish weighed like 1kg when I tried to pick it up. Too much food!)

We also headed over to the Metropolis, where Mark, Christian and Munik are staying and went to check out the place. The room Mark was staying in was nice and cosy, but I was more interested in the lap pool and the gym downstairs. We had a bit of fun playing on the equipment.
JL and I then walked back home through Albert Park – really nice walk, even though it was uphill most of the time. The floral setting was really nice and I took pictures of pretty cool flowers. Ok, I’m getting tired. It’s 8pm now, going to turn on the telly and see what’s on the movie channel. Hope you all had an awesome weekend and I can’t wait to get back to Syd next week. I miss you all!

*Lotsa Hugs*

Jenn