In case we had possibly forgotten, the view from our window, vineyards as far as the eye can see, would soon remind us that we are right in the middle of wine making country. At 10 am our guide and driver for the day, Ryan, collected us in a Mercedes 7 series car. Ready to do wine tasting in style!! Our first stop was at TerraVin, a lovely boutique winery up in the hills. After inspecting the vines and hearing about the loving care that goes into production we g...

During the night the wind which had already been quite brisk became stronger and stronger. Amanda woke at about 3 am and the wind was so fierce that it was frightening. We live in Hong Kong and are used to typhoons, but this was really up too close and personal for my liking. Not the best weather to be staying in a tree house!! Luckily the wind had died right down by morning. However, we were not at all surprised to discover that our whale watching trip (our sec...

After a very late night we were faced with a very early morning! We were feeling less than ready to get up at 6.30 am but were up, packed and even had breakfast in plenty of time to get a cab to the airport for our flight to Christchurch. We landed on time and went to pick up our hire car. Of course, if it hadn't been for the devastating earthquake we would have been in Christchurch already as that was where quarter finals 2 and 4 were due to be held. Unfortunat...

After a lazy day in which we did very little except eat, sleep and catch up on emails, 5 pm saw us back at Eden Park and ready to do it all over again only this time we were there to watch the All Blacks play Argentina. Whilst enjoying pre dinner drinks and canapes in the same 3rd floor lounge as yesterday we settled down to watch Australia play South Africa on one of the big TV screens. It was quite a tense game and was made more interesting because one of our ...

After breakfast we decided to go for a bit of a wander. We had a bit of shopping to collect in Broadway, Newmarket so we hopped on a red City Link bus. Unfortunately for us, this bus immediately turned a corner and took us in entirely the opposite direction from where we wanted to go! We got off at the Britomart transport centre and got on a green Inner Link bus which, quite miraculously, took us in the right direction. Those Link buses seem to be a very good ide...