Last weekend Kristie and I took an extended weekend to celebrate our 12th anniversary. We booked a bach (NZ's word for a cottage) outside of Levin, which is just off the Kapiti coast.
The place we rented was a gorgeous little bedroom loft with a completely stocked kitchen, wood burner, walnut and hazelnut grove outside as well as a lemon tree. The bach was kind of rustic, but also very modern in its conveniences. In addition to just providing the accommodations, they also provided food for your breakfasts free of charge, including Muesli, Free-range-organic Bacon & Eggs, Coffee and Tea. They also included fresh produce, OJ, and a bottle of wine. They also had freshly made hazelnut fudge as well as home roasted walnuts. These were all the freebies. They also had a fully stocked larder with tonnes of food, both frozen and packaged that you could buy if you wanted to stay inside the whole time. Added to all this goodness, they allowed pets too!
The mini break kind of started for us on Saturday when we were making all the preparations for the trip. We made a batch of our famous (at least in our house) spaghetti sauce, we baked a batch of chocolate-hazelnut cookies, and also brought along a frozen batch of our pumpkin soup. We bought a few things to bring along as well such as pesto, sundried tomatoes, and a can of tuna for a great panini that we like making for road trips, some corn chips, salsa and chili beans for some hot nachos, as well as some fruits and veggies and some pop (fizzy drinks for the NZers).
We left in late morning on Sunday, when we packed up the car with groceries and our furry friends, and drove the approx. 100 km to Levin. (See, that's me locking the door).We stopped at Paekakariki for a walk along the beach and picnic. While there we saw lots of dogs (and their owners) out for beach walks as well.
After a nice long walk along the beach we headed back for a nice picnic in a little sun trap called the Pickle Pot in Queen Elisabeth Park.
One of the great things about this weekend was the fact that although the weather was supposed to be rainy (at times heavy) the whole weekend, it seemed that the further north we went, the better the weather got. On the beach, we could see the clouds encompassing Wellington, but it was quite sunny directly overhead and the sun seemed to be expanding further north.
We stopped in the town of Otaki for a short walk along to look in the shops, but we didn't spend too long, and bought nothing.
After packing it in at Otaki, we continued on for the short drive to Levin. We got lost (not really lost, but misdirected) from Google Maps. Thank you Google. We only went off a couple kilometres, so no big deal.
We arrived at the bach at about 4:00 pm and unloaded the car. Here are a couple shots of the bach:
After settling in, that night we made our first dinner of famous (at least at our house) spaghetti. We accompanied the dish with some whole wheat bread and L & P (A famous drink in NZ).After dinner we washed up and watched a miniseries that rented here in Wellington called State of Play. This miniseries was the basis of the American movie of the same name. Based on the fact that we've now seen both, I would have to say that the miniseries was much better than the movie. If you get the chance, I would totally rent the movie. Actually, we did, so there you go.
While watching the movie, we enjoyed a plate of our homemade chocolate hazelnut cookies as well as a bunch of the walnuts provided by our host. We watched three of the six episodes and then went to bed. Oh, by the way, wood burners, totally rock as opposed to fireplaces.The next morning we made a breakfast of fresh eggs and bacon, as well as a side of muesli, before we headed off to Waikanae for another day at the beach.
After a few hours of meandering on the beach, where a I got a bit of a sunburn, we went back to the cottage for lunch and some reading. The dogs also took a bit of time to relax and smell the flowers:
Later that night we headed off Kimberly Reserve, where we went for a walk along the river and through the fields. I took some wonderful pictures of birds in flight, but the birds were blurry. My camera work was fine, but the birds were blurry. Also, it seems that the Kimberly Reserve is built on a slope or something, because I appear a bit crooked.
When we got back to the batch that night we enjoyed a meal of pumpkin soup and toasted cheese sandwiches. We also capped off the evening with the final three episodes of State of Play.The final day, instead of making eggs and bacon again, we had a breakfast of freshly made BLTs Only we didn't have any L, we had A as in avocado. They were quite yummy!
That day, on the drive home we stopped at Kuku beach which didn't hold too much interest for us as it seemed more a place where the water met the fields than an actual beach, so we continued on to Waikanae again. After one final walk along the beach there, we stopped once more at the Pickle Pot for a final picnic lunch of our toasted paninis.That pretty much summed up our trip. Here are a few more pics of spots along the way:
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