With sore legs and aching limbs, we headed down to Napier. What a cool place! The journey took us about 3 hours but we took our time and had to sing to each other as the radio wasn't working!

We struggled to find accomodation in Napier as it's the grape picking season so alot of the hostels are booked up but we got a room for our first night a backpackers in town. Napier is mainly Art Deco as after a massive earthquake in the 30's the whole city was destroyed so they stopped anyone rebuilding their properties until they'd agreed what style was to be used for the buildings and they went for Art Deco. It seems every building has some hint of Art Deco and our hostel was an old hotel and they'd preserved it really well. We spent the afternoon having a look around and walking along Hawkes Bay. We spent the evening in the pub attached to the hostel as the food and beers were really cheap so we thought it would be rude not to!

We had to check out at 10am the next day so we dumped our bags in the car and did the self-guided Art Deco tour around town and then checked in to our new place which was really great with a balcony overlooking the bay, it's a tough life! We were then picked up to go on our wine tour - Woo Hoo! They were only six of us on the tour and we went to 4 vineyards. The first one was Vidal where we had some great wine but the food was even better - a tasting platter with chilli Squid (which we both had!), Mussels, Steak, Roasted Peppers etc etc - Yum. The guy running the tour was great and we had a really nice afternoon (helped by the fact we tasted 6-8 wines at each place!). We had a Thai Green Curry for dinner so we could have one of the bottles of wine we'd bought and an earlyish night.

The next day we left Napier and headed down to Martinborough for a night. We rented a cottage - Nutmeg Cottage - which was really sweet and also had a washing machine - very exciting! We spent the afternoon at two vineyards that had been recommeded to us and bought more wine which will be making its way to Wellington with us. We went to the local butcher and got two steaks for 4 pounds - it's cheaper here than buying vegatables.

Next stop Wellington.