Surprises

Hey Skyring,

One of the things I love about my job is getting to see different parts of the country, and being pleasantly surprised by them. Last year the place that stood out for me was a little town called Te Aroha, and I don’t remember where we stayed (if I could be bothered, I could probably search for it in our work accommodation database, but I’d have to get out of bed to do that!), but the place was quite nice, and they owner thought BookCrossing sounded like a cool idea. So cool that she gave me a couple of books to read and then register etc! To top it all off, we found this amazing restaurant, called Ironique, which had amazing food, and an even more amazing decor! Lots of stuff done in iron (obviously!). My favourite was the bent cutlery!

Then last weekend, we were in Fairlie (think down South!). Shane had taken the car to go visit his Dad, who is working somewhere near there, and so I had the place to myself, and also no car. I figured I’d go into town and find some of the historic places listed on the Historic Trust Register (I’m not far off hitting 300 snarfs!), so I started walking. I only got to next door, and someone asked me where I’d come from. Number 40, I replied, laughing, and she said she thought I might have done one of the walks near by. It wasn’t a terribly long conversation, but when we finished, I turned around, and took the longer (by about 40 minutes!) route into town, via the river. It was such a nice walk, and I never would have found it on my own. Again, pleasantly surprised.

Then again, I always enjoy being in the South Island. People here are usually so friendly, and happy to have a yarn!

When I finally got into town, I was walking along the main street (called Main Street!) taking photos of old buildings, when I was (not exactly) stopped by a woman in a car. She owned the art gallery/shop over the road, and had gotten sick of sitting in the shop, so was sitting opposite, and if anyone went in she was planning on dashing across the road (There was some nice art in there too, but the one I liked most was a bit big to fit in the car with all our stuff, and I don’t really have space for it in my room!) We had a nice long chat, I managed to sneak an introduction to Markeroni to her, and I even managed to hoist one of my BookCrossing bookmarks off on her! She hasn’t joined yet, but she still might (Or if she has she hasn’t listed me as her referring member!).

I walked down the road, taking photos as I went (turned out the restaurant/pub we’d had dinner in the night before was a historic place!), and eventually made my way to the museum. The museum (who the woman in the car had recommended to me) was the place to go if you were interested in history apparently. Unfortunately, the museum was playing host to an exhibition, not so much about history, but still awesome! Quilts! One of my Aunts is a quilter, and I’d like to learn one day, and this exhibition did nothing to sway me! Quite a few gorgeous quilts, all in different styles, and fabrics. There was one amazing one of the moon over a bay (I can’t remember the name of the bay), and there were some fantastically bright ones made for kids (usually the kids had chosen the fabric too!).

Now we can skip forward to yesterday. After a fairly long drive (pun not intended), we arrived in the bustling metropolis of Ranfurly (home of New Zealand’s coldest known temperature of -25.6 degrees – thankfully it wasn’t that cold last night!). We weren’t even staying IN Ranfurly. Instead, we made our way to the Trail Blazers B&B. I had trouble deciding which room was the most awesome, but eventually settled on mine (it was the only one with a tv in it, so I knew I wouldn’t be kept awake by someone else watching tv :p). It even had a cool quilt on the bed! The owners offered to cook us dinner, but when they found out I’m vegetarian, and realised they didn’t have any vegetables in the house (that would have gone down well!), they recommended the Naseby Royal Hotel for dinner.

Holy Moly it was Anasing (pun intended :p)! I had the vegetarian spanakopita Usually I’d expect to be asking for something like a burger without the meat patty, or fish and chips, and it still wouldn’t be particularly great, but this was seriously awesome! Vegetables on the side weren’t overcooked (remember those peas?), and it tasted like someone had actually made it there, not ordered it in, unfrozen it for me, and put it on a plate! Even the hummus was good Sadly it was insanely filling, so we couldn’t fit in desert (or maybe that’s a good thing!).

And the best thing? I looked it up today, it’s registered as a historic place AND it’s in a historic area!

Cheers, DL

PS: the coolest thing about this B&B: my room had glow in the dark stickers on the ceiling!

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