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!