Crown Napier

... all exceptional (Vivien knows this as one of them is the house wine in Hakkasan apparently). The reds were the business and the gift of the rest of the fresh bottle of Pinot Gris was splendid.<br><br>2008 Sauvignon Blanc - Herbs and grass. Lovely soft acidity and more herbs on the palette.<br><br>2009 Pinot Gris - V. pale (very young - only in the bottle for nine days!), beautiful soft pears following through ...

... close along the way. Our initial plan was to stay put on one of the resting area and wait out til the next morning, after much debate, we decided to walk the path across fields full of curious cows and sheep. The black cows are the most threatening, grazing our every move and at some point we thought they were charging at us. We didn't need torchlight as the moonlight is more than enough for us to see and lots of beautiful ...

... a hill...you actually have to pay more if you want to be strapped in. We had planned to do this, but we made the mistake of extrapolating the cost of the 6 second trip into an hourly rate [for the record, CAD$25,200 per hour]; · Swooping: You get cocooned into a harness that looks like a sleeping bag, get attached to a rope and then winched up 40 metres to a platform. Before you can change your mind, you're released and you "swoop" down to the ...

... number was on our phone, to say that they had it. They told her they'd leave the phone at the tourist office in Napier for us, so Shannon emailed to let us know. In the morning, we went to the tourist office but they didn't have anything. We checked a couple more time but by noon, we needed to head off, so we told the tourist office not to worry about it. Turns out the person dropped off the phone minutes after we'd left. So the tourist office folks called ...

... of Friday was fairly uneventful. We had something to eat at Breakers, as all the supermarkets were shut so we couldn't buy anything. We then wandered back to the hostel for an early night. Saturday we wandered back into the city centre to buy some books, for me to take to the cricket on Sunday. In the afternoon we met up with Pete and Claire, who happened to be in Napier for Easter as well. Claire's family is from Napier. We aimed to go to a winery to have some lunch ...

Napier - 16th February 2008. Arrived in Napier about 12:45 and what a fantastic welcome we received from the locals. An air display by a couple of five ship formations and a flyby from a Catalina, superb, just the tick for our Dennis. When we disembarked some 300 vintage cars greeted us and all their passengers were dressed up in 1930s costumes. Apparently we arrived on the day of their Art Deco celebration ...

... here in 1931 that knocked over the city and it was rebuilt in Art Deco. There are numerous pretty parks and gardens. We enjoyed visiting several of them and also going to the overlook. We enjoyed eating dinner at a Thai restaurant near the visitor information center on Marine Parade. They did a wonderful Massuman curry and basil prawn stir fry. The evening was spent in the nice big spa tub.

... had two medevacs and so had only just go t in, most of the boats were out of the water with masts down, huge components everywhere and a lot of frantic sewing going on in the sail loft. Boat 45 (previously 'Logica') is now a smart bright red and renamed 'BG Group' so that's the one we hope to see sailing into Sydney in a couple of weeks.<br><br>We spent a night of luxury at one of our favourite hostels, Moana Lodge by the sea just north of Wellington, and ...