Wellington and Marlborough

In Wellington we participated in a food tour and gourmet lunch with chef Shaun Clouston, co-owner and executive chef at Logan Brown. It is one of the premier restaurants in Wellington, and Shaun, besides being an amazing chef, is very personable and a great foodie tour guide.

We started off with a trip to a family-owned grocery, Moore Wilson. It is like Longo’s at home, but with only one very large location as well as a Costco-like wholesaler side and a Wine and Spirits Shop. There are two other big pluses to this store: they feature fresh, sustainable foods and they work with a number of local small producers, like fishmongers, bakers, and butchers, and sell their products in the store. The bakery that provides the French-style baguettes will come to replenish stock multiple times a day, and Moana New Zealand, which sells the fresh fish, closes for the day when they run out. We couldn’t resist buying a couple of small bottles of infused extra virgin olive oil to bring home, once Shaun gave us the background on the couple who make the oil and the process they use. Watch for the salads and nibblies to come when we get back!

At the entrance to Moore Wilson

This chinese takeaway is permanent, but they also
have food stands with rotating occpancy so
new vendors can 'test the market'.

The fresh baked goods looked particularly appetizing!

After our tour around the market, we headed over to Logan Brown. It is in a former Bank of New Zealand building, with a high ceiling and lots of windows, and an almost round shape with the bar as the focal point. The bar itself is unique in that there’s a sort of aquarium of small local sealife as part of the bar top.

The restaurant

The interior is gorgeous

The little aquarium bar-top. Small mussels....

...and a crayfish, otherwise known as a Spiny Rock Lobster. This
guy will be put back out to sea when he gets too big for the
restaurant.

Our host, Shaun Clouston, in what might
be his 'Iron Chef New Zealand' pose, if they
had such a thing.

Our visit started off with a fresh-made cocktail that had been devised by Logan Brown’s mixologist just for our group. Not only did she infuse the gin she used as the base, she also made up little smoke-bouquets from aromatics, and infused the glasses with the smoke before she made the drinks. That was really inventive and did give the drink a smoky component all the way to the bottom.

The rest of the lunch was fantastic! Six courses, paired with wine if desired, showcasing local New Zealand produce, meat and seafoods. We could wax rapturous over each one, but we’ll just put in the photos and descriptions below:

Albacore tuna with native herbs and black lime

Paua, a type of mushroom, in ravioli and poached

Hapuka, a delicious local New Zealand fish

Crayfish sandwich with truffle slices

Lamb loin, smoked ricotta fritter and a rabbit ragout ravioli

Poached white peach with a little meringue on the side

Chocolate 'cremeux', chocolate mousse covered
in dark chocolate with berries on the side
and a sugared hazelnut on top.

Needless to say, dinner, if we had any (it was so long ago we can’t remember) was a bowl of soup and some cheese and crackers at the Bistro. That’s become our go-to for a light meal when we’ve had a large lunch…so far it seems to be working.

The next day we had a beautiful early morning sail in to Picton, just across the Cook Strait from Wellington on the South Island, at the end of the Queen Charlotte Sound. We sailed the Sound for a couple of hours, very peaceful and quiet.

The sun had just risen when Monica got outside
with her camera.

Beside the dock at Picton

We were touring into the wine country of Marlborough, to visit first a private garden, and then a couple of wineries, one being the winery that put New Zealand on the global map, Cloudy Bay.

The Upton Oaks Garden is on New Zealand’s list of Gardens to Visit, and was developed by the owners, Dave and Sue Monahan, into this beautiful formal garden with orchards of peaches, apples, pears and an olive grove on the side. The family’s main business is making furniture, but they do all the garden work themselves.

The house is in the style of the early 1900s
in New Zealand

After a stroll through the gardens and a stop for refreshments, we boarded the bus again and drove on to Cloudy Bay for a wine tasting. As a few of Cloudy Bay’s wines are available at home, we were already familiar with them, but there were some others to try that we hadn’t seen.

The Cellar Door Entrance at Cloudy Bay

The tasting room

Out in the grounds

The hills in the background were the inspiration
for Cloudy Bay's label

After Cloudy Bay, our second stop was Wither Hills. This winery wasn’t all that far away from Cloudy Bay, but we weren’t overly impressed with the wines or the way the tasting was set up for 29 people on the tour.

Back on the bus to Picton, but even though the day was not the most satisfying, we did have the sail back out through Queen Charlotte Sound to make up for it.

Onward to Akaroa, the port for Christchurch on this cruise.

Napier – A Day in the 30’s….

….1930’s, that is!

(Side note: It's about time we got the blog up to date...with so many ports in New Zealand and changes in the itinerary due to the coronavirus, we've let it slip. Will catch up in the next few days!)

We arrived in Napier in the evening and had dinner at Prego rather than going out into town. Turns out that this was not the best idea. We didn’t know this beforehand, but we had arrived just in time for Napier’s annual Art Deco Heritage Festival, which is a really big deal here.

But before we get to that, Captain Vorland had another chance to show just how deft he is at moving Crystal Serenity around tight spaces. Our assigned berth was in a rather small port area, where he would have to swing the ship 90 degrees and then back into the dockage. It was rather windy, hitting the ship side-on, and we had help from two tugboats, but he managed it. Our friends Terry and his wife Kerry were in Napier and watching this from a nearby hilltop overlook. Even they thought it was some pretty skilled maneuvering.

It was quite windy - we needed the help of a
couple of tugboats

This is the berth we were aiming for...

....bow in the corner and then swing the rest of the ship
in. We weren't sure she would fit. but the
captain obviously knew what he needed to do.

We should have twigged to the fact that something was going on when we saw some old-time planes fly by….

We were in the wrong part of the ship, and didn’t know about the air show that could be seen from the aft decks until someone told us about it later. Oh, well…

The next morning we took the shuttle into town early, as Terry had booked an Art Deco Walking Tour with the local historical society for 10 a.m. It was quite the vision, walking around downtown. Lots of people were dressed in 1930’s period costume, and there would be a parade of oldtime cars starting at noon.

Why is this such a big thing, you ask? Napier was literally wiped off the map on February 3, 1931 when a massive 7.9 magnitude earthquake lifted the whole town by about 2.5 metres. Whatever the earthquake left was consumed by fires that started right afterward. It only took a few weeks before the decision was made to rebuild, and many of the buildings erected in the ensuing two years were of the design of the time, later called Art Deco. Now Napier has the largest concentration of Art Deco architecture in the world, more even than South Beach in Miami. Since the 1990s the community, and many New Zealanders from elsewhere, have been celebrating this with the annual Heritage Festival. Here are some photos of the morning tour:

One of the gardens by the seaside

The bicycle ride around town would be starting
soon. Look closely and you will find people
dressed in period costume, and riding
vintage bikes!

The entrance to the Masonic Hotel. It looks
like we're on a movie set!

The art deco plasterwork and paint are beautiful.

Old buildings, old cars, and even the kids
were dressed up in 1930s gear.

After the tour we drove out to see some of the area around Napier and have lunch. Terry drove us out to Mission Winery, which was established over 100 years ago, for a tasting. It is a beautiful place with a very nice view over the vineyards. It’s odd to see a subdivision right across the street; wonder if being a wine drinker is a requirement for buying a home there.

Unfortunately, they were booked out for lunch, so Terry drove us to the Crab Farm Winery to eat. Although the wine wasn’t the greatest, the seafood platters were amazing!

This was a platter for two! Delicious - our dinner that night
was soup with cheese and crackers in the Bistro!

With Kerry and Terry at Crab Farm, about to dig in.

In the afternoon we drove out to see Craggy Range, one of the better-known wineries in Hawke’s Bay. For a very reasonable fee, a couple of us tasted 5 very nice wines, some of which are even available in the Vintages section of the LCBO.

One of the vineyards

The 'Cellar Door' tasting room

The craggy range that give the winery its name.

We said goodbye to Terry and Kerry at the port, but only for a little while. Terry was making a reservation at Doyle’s at Watson’s Bay in Sydney so we could have our traditional seafood lunch together.