Christmas arrived rather quickly for us without much thought to what we would actually do. Knowing only that we wanted to get away from Christchurch, we decided to try to get a couple of nights in a nice hotel where our Christmas meal would be cooked (and cleared up) for us and we could relax just the two of us. Of course that idea went out of the window as soon as we had made a couple of enquiries and got 'booked up' or 'closed' as our answer.

Luckilly a colleague of Pauls offered his dads, cousins (?) vacant but fully furnished house up in Picton for us to spend the Christmas days in. Not ones for looking gift horses in their mouths we accepted the offer.

Picton is in area of the north of the South Island called Marlborough Sounds. A maze of sea and islands created when river carved canyons were flooded by the ocean. The inland area of this region is renowned for it's vinyards and wine producing. We drove up to Picton on the 24th and the journey took about 6 hours broken up by stops for my "thimble bladder". We had been warned the traffic would be heavy but the roads seemed pretty clear to us and it's not like we were expecting the M25. Well, when all you've got to share your square km with is a few dozen sheep...

Arriving in Picton we went straight to the house and across the road to where Jeremy's (Pauls colleague) Dad lives and he gave us the keys to the house and showed us around. It was completely furnished and kitted out as the cousin was planning to let it as a holiday home until it sold. Perfect for us for a few days of Christmas relaxation.

We had already planned and shopped for our feast and the turkey was left out overnight to finish its defrosting. We set up our tiny fake tree in the lounge, put our presents under it and were set. Christmas day morning we awoke with plans to put of the christmas music playlist that Paul had created on the laptop. Thinking that would get us right in a festive mood and we could open presents over our deliciously rich breakfast. Small hitch...power cut! Yep, no cooker, kettle, toaster, tv OR music since the laptop was out of battery.

Although the weather wasn't great and the clouds were hinting of a coming downpour, we decided to take a walk down to the nearby marina. It was really busy, with most of the vessels looking like they're owned by locals. Many of these were launching their boats into to water as we got there. Often an alarming number of people onto small boats. We wondered what on earth they'd be doing once they got out into the sound but we were told later they were probably heading out to one of the many holiday batches accessible only by boat.

As the clouds closed in we headed back to the house. Stopping briefly at the harbour masters office to ask him about the power cut. The power had just come on and he told us that it had been caused by a drunk driver knocking over a lamp post late the previous evening. Genius.

Back at the house our Christmas day got into full swing with music, a turkey with all the trimmings in the oven, a bottle of bubbly and our present opening. We were very grateful to have gifts sent from our parents for us to open as well as what we had got eachother. The rest of the day consisted of watching the back to back films on the tv and filling our faces with the excelent meal (if I do say so myself). Not to mention all the cheese and biscuits, chocolates, nuts etc. To sum up, we were gluttons, but since it was just the two of us we had a lovely day.