New Zealand - Blenheim ie. Wine Country!

After waking up at 4:30 AM or was it taking a cab at 4:30?? hmm. Anyways, after checking into our international flight, we made it to New Zealand. David and I were on separate flights from our parents, so we arrived in New Zealand a couple of hours ahead of them. Unfortunately, they must have arrived after multiple international flights landed, so instead of clearing customs quickly like us, they ended up having to run from the international terminal to the domestic terminal! It reminded me of our honeymoon, when David and I were running from place to place!

Anyways, after getting on our TINY plane to Blenheim. We got our rental car and made it to our hotel. While unpacking, I found that a little creature had decided to come on our journey with us...


Since it appeared that everyone liked to see the wombat more than they liked us, we had to get one of our own! He was quite excited to be traveling to New Zealand with us.


The first night in Blenheim, we walked into town, which was essentially empty and dead even though it was only 5:30 PM. After a delicious meal, we headed back to the hotel and relaxed while reading a book. The wombat wanted to read about Australia with David.


The next morning, we took a wine tour of the Marlborough region in New Zealand. Our first stop was Wither Hills. Even from this simple shot, you could already tell that New Zealand was going to be beautiful. Look at the vineyard with the background of mountains!


The wombat got a little thirsty and was hoping that something would come out of the barrel.


Unlike his last wine tour, wombat got up and close with the vines.


Since it was getting closer to ripening season, the vineyards will end up clipping some leaves and placing nets over their vines. This enables them to ripen quicker and keep the birds from eating the plump fruit. Wombat enjoyed climbing up the netting!


Our next stop was Matua Winery, which had many fun and intersting things to play with. We found this life size cage for David.


Wombat also almost got eatten alive by this fake crocodile!


For lunch, we stopped at a winery and was able to order a meal before sampling the wines. We found that there was a fun display of corks for wombat to spin around on.

One of the more interesting wineries we went to was Bladen, which is a boutique winery. They had a little shack as their cellar door unlike most of the other wineries we went to, which had huge buildings. Inside, they had a mini grape press that the wombat tried to use.


One of the more well known wineries that we stopped at was Forrest. It was great to learn about the wines and see the varieties they had, but what we didn't like was that they normally would have charged a fee for wine tasting (where as most other places are free). And they only allowed us to sample 6 of their 16 wines.


Our final winery was Cloudy Bay, which was overpriced wines. But the best part was they had crackers for us to enjoy for free!


After all these wines, we were ready to have a simple meal. Later that night, we taught our parents how to play dominoes, which ended up being a non-stop game for the rest of our trip!

Update - Random Photos and Visiting Family!

Sorry for the delay in updates! It's not as if we haven't been doing fun stuff, but I just haven't had any time to update the blog.

While Sarah was still in town, we saw this statue being built. It was just randomly built between the Rocks and Circular Quay. It was made of fake plastic peaches, that looked very real.


On February 3rd, there was a Manly Open Swim, which was a 1K, 2K or 10K swim and a couple of our friends decided to swim it. Don't worry, neither David or I tried it. Here's David and Nicole before the swim.


It was pretty intense before the 1K race. There were lots of people waiting to get in the water. The race was divided to start in different races for men, women, nippers (kids) and "back of the pack".


Here's one of the heats that started the race. Apparently, if you were in the water, you were either constantly kicking someone in the face, side, etc or someone else was kicking or clawing you! Looked pretty dangerous to me...


After the swim, we hosted a BBQ with our friends Charlie and Lily who have a sweet apartment. Three bedrooms, huge living room, wrap around balcony with a grill. It was a great way to spend a rainy afternoon.

On Monday night, we met up with David's Aunt Maddy and Uncle Sheldon for dinner. They were in town with their friends, Arnie and Judy. Unfortunately, it had been pouring rain in Sydney since they had arrived into the city, but they still seemed in relatively high spirits. We ended up dining at Pier, which was a restaurant that used to be a pier. Unfortunately, I didn't get any photos, but imagine a dining room that jutted out into the water. It was super skinny and long. Thank you so much Maddy, Sheldon, Arnie and Judy for the treat!

During dinner, we created a plan to surprise David's parents who were arriving later that week. The plan was to bring the parents to yum cha (aka dim sum) and David's aunt/uncle would be there as a surprise!


After lunch, we took a small break since it began to rain again before we met up at the Opera House. The ship behind them is the cruise that Maddy, Sheldon, Judy and Arnie were boarding. It was a 21 day cruise!


After we walked around Circular Quay, we decided to bring them to the Rocks and ended up at the Argyle for some drinks. The downstairs had interesting types of chairs. It was either a big circular booth, which we chose to sat in. The other option was a couch like chair that had a table sticking out of it.


Amazingly, Mom and Dad were awake despite arriving that morning from San Diego.

Sheldon and Maddy were excited to spend time with all of us in Sydney!


The one thing that I have constantly heard about the Argyle was the bathrooms. So, we stopped by. When we entered, we saw these structures with a sink in the middle of a large room. There was no clear male/female sign.


The urinal was actually behind this cocoon shaped thing.


After Argyle, we ate at the Italian Villa that was in the Rocks. It was actually really good and after dinner, we finally called it a night. The next morning, after the parents visited the Aquarium, I met up with them for lunch and the afternoon. We walked around Darling Harbour and headed to Paddy's Market.


Eventually, we made it to Hyde Park and did some more walking around there. Amazingly enough, I was the one who was tired of walking and the parents could have kept going. Somehow, I managed to convince them it was time to take a rest and wait for David to meet us for dinner!


We ate in Darling Harbour and walked around and were able to enjoy the night time views.



We called it an early night because the next day was David's birthday! For David's birthday, we decided to do a Hunter Valley wine tour. First stop was Tempus Two. They had a lot of interesting wines to try. We ended up buying a dessert wine that was called Botrytis Riesling. Apparently, Botrytis is a disease that occurs to the grapes, so it's relatively hard to find this type.


We got to Hunter Valley around 10:00 AM, so it was a bit hard to imagine that we were going to start drinking so early! Here's the birthday boy with bottles and bottles of wine.


Next stop was McGuigan Wines. The bartender was a bit slow in pouring our samples, so we eventually gave up the wine tasting and went to cheese tasting!


We ended up having a light lunch in this little village that contained cellar doors, other small shops and cafes. Our "light" lunch was foccacia sandwiches and salads that could have fed at least double the amount of people.

One of our final stops was at this one vineyard that had some amazing views. This place was different because we didn't try any wines. Instead we had many different schnapps like liquors.


After our wine tour, we decided to bring the parents to Manly since they hadn't seen where we lived. It was a beautiful day so we decided to sit ouside on the ferry.


The final days in Sydney, we went to a symphony with the parents before we walked around to Woolloomooloo and got some meat pies, an Australian staple. Afterwards, the parents went to Melbourne for a couple days. They came back Friday afternoon and were able to spend the afternoon with David in Manly.

They walked to Shelley Beach and did a small hike near Shelley Beach.


On Saturday morning, we woke up at 4:30 AM to head to the airport for New Zealand!

Sydney Aquarium and Wildlife World

Sarah and I spent the next day looking at all types of animals. First stop, Sydney aquarium. We found this friendly shark at the entrance. Does he look familiar to you?


In Australia, they always have these long-necked turtles. Look how long the neck is for this little guy. They look kind of funny to me.


There was a large salt water crocodile in the aquarium and you could look at him either on his level or walk up and take a look at him from the top. This sign was funny. It says "If the fall doesn't kill you, the crocodile will"


Besides the typical fish, there was some octopus that loved to hug the glass.


We also got to see some little penguins. These poor guys probably have terrible eyesight from all the people taking photos of them with flashes.


There was one whole tank of jellyfish. Sophia, this is for you!


We managed to catch the seal feeding and watch them constantly catch fish. I was able to capture this guy with a fish still in his mouth.


Sarah's holding a shark egg. The material of it is similar to what your nails are made of. It's circular/cone shaped so that they won't get swept away in the currents.


We found a shark tank and these big sharks were resting on the top of the tunnel.




There was another touch pool that allowed us to touch this sea cucumber. He was pretty squishy.


At the end of the aquarium, we sat down and just watched these fish/sharks/manta rays swim around.



After the aquarium, we headed to Sydney Wildlife World, which is right next to the aquarium. There was a butterfly exhibit, insects/bugs, reptiles and animals. This reptile has a tail that looks like his head to defend himself from other animals.


This guy got a pretty big cage compared to the other reptiles.


We also saw a lot of kangaroos lounging around and we wanted to join them.


Sarah was pretending to eat like the kangaroos and I caught her in mid munch.


The best part of our day was seeing the wombat. Unfortunately for us, he was sleeping the whole time. He's lying on his back all sprawled out!


We also saw a small koala exhibit. This guy was so cute!


After walking around all day, we took a break at a bar near Circular Quay before heading to Shangrila, which has a bar on their top floor. We met up with David before heading over there. There was a storm rolling in and we were able to watch some crazy lightning as it rolled over the city.


After our drink at Shangrila, we headed to Rockpool for a delicious dinner with Casey, Nicole, and Avaleigh. It was so yummy and a great way to end Sarah's trip in Australia. Sarah, we hope you had a great time!