I mentioned in my previous post that my friends and I had planned a spontaneous trip to Napier, which is about a 3 and a half hour drive northeast of Wellington. We left at the crack of dawn on Thursday, running to catch the bus at the railway station (a good 35 minute walk from my flat). When we left, we really didn't have much of a plan except for a hostel reservation. So with some PB&J's and a general idea of where we were headed (winelands!) we set off for Napier! The drive was gorgeous. Normally on a 5 hour drive (the downside of a $13 bus ride is that it comes with lots of stops) I would try to sleep, but the scenery outside my window kept me alert.
When we finally arrived in Napier, we found our hostel and settled in briefly to our private room. This was my first time staying in a hostel and overall I was pleasantly surprised. It was an old hotel that had partially burned down in a fire, so it had a pretty cool, "art-deco" vibe.
The art-deco vibe comes from the fact that Napier is the art-deco capital of the world! To be honest, I had no idea what this meant, but after exploring for a few hours I came to appreciate the unique building styles and city sculptures. Another great aspect of our hostel was that it was located just a block from Starbucks (WIFI!) and the beach! It wasn't exactly a swimming beach (we were told the strong currents had resulted in many casualties) but it was still nice to check out and gave the town a beachy vibe as well.
The art-deco vibe comes from the fact that Napier is the art-deco capital of the world! To be honest, I had no idea what this meant, but after exploring for a few hours I came to appreciate the unique building styles and city sculptures. Another great aspect of our hostel was that it was located just a block from Starbucks (WIFI!) and the beach! It wasn't exactly a swimming beach (we were told the strong currents had resulted in many casualties) but it was still nice to check out and gave the town a beachy vibe as well.
Our first night in Napier was pretty anti-climatic. We were exhausted from the bus ride and exploring, so we hit up the grocery store and made our own pizza for dinner. We also made our plans for the next day! The main event? Vineyards!
We arrived at Coastal Wine Cycles around 10:30 Friday morning and rented our "California beach cruisers" from a sweet lady who tried to smother us in sunscreen (and thank god for that-- this whole "no-ozone-layer" thing is very real). After filling our baskets with a map and a bottle of water, she sent us on our way to bike around the various vineyards. Surprisingly, we only got lost once, and when we did we accidentally stumbled upon our first vineyard! The wine tasting was free (our favorite) but we caved and bought a delicious food platter to share for lunch.
My favorite winery was called Elephant Hill (is anyone surprised?) It was absolutely beautiful and way too classy for us hot and sweaty bikers from America who knew very little about wine other than it tastes good and we'd like to try some of theirs. They charged us $5 but we got to hang out in the coolest winery (they had an infinity pool!) I've ever seen and we got to taste some pretty great wine as well.
We arrived at Coastal Wine Cycles around 10:30 Friday morning and rented our "California beach cruisers" from a sweet lady who tried to smother us in sunscreen (and thank god for that-- this whole "no-ozone-layer" thing is very real). After filling our baskets with a map and a bottle of water, she sent us on our way to bike around the various vineyards. Surprisingly, we only got lost once, and when we did we accidentally stumbled upon our first vineyard! The wine tasting was free (our favorite) but we caved and bought a delicious food platter to share for lunch.
My favorite winery was called Elephant Hill (is anyone surprised?) It was absolutely beautiful and way too classy for us hot and sweaty bikers from America who knew very little about wine other than it tastes good and we'd like to try some of theirs. They charged us $5 but we got to hang out in the coolest winery (they had an infinity pool!) I've ever seen and we got to taste some pretty great wine as well.
Not only were the wineries a treat, but biking around New Zealand wine country was unbelievably beautiful (I'm thinking I'm going to have to start coming up with some new synonyms for "beautiful" and "gorgeous" before you all get too bored of my blog). We passed vineyards, apple and orange orchards, fruit stands, and (of course) fields of SHEEP! There really are more sheep than people in this country, and I LOVE IT. I'm convinced that every field looks 10 million times better with a handful of sheep thrown in the landscape.
After the wineries, we decided to hang out on the beach for a bit as well. We had brought our own bottle of wine (we were expecting the wine tastings to be a bit more pricey than they were) so we chilled it in the ocean and enjoyed the gorgeous day we had been given. It was a pretty incredible day and I'm so SO glad we decided to make the trip to Napier for the weekend.
The next day we had to check out of our hostel by 10 AM but our bus wasn't leaving until 4, so we had some time to kill. We found a farmers market and snagged quite a few free samples (we're trying to be cheap here) and then decided to check out a part of town we hadn't seen. We came across an even MORE beautiful beach (I didn't think that was possible) where we hung out until it was time to catch our bus.
Overall, it was a pretty amazing weekend. Classes start tomorrow! I have to say that it's pretty weird going into syllabus week knowing my sister is on spring break and my friends only have a few more days of classes. I guess that's what I get for coming to the southern hemisphere. If you couldn't tell, I'm pretty happy with that decision though.