He's the diet coke of evil, only 1 calorie, not quite evil enough..

This is the view I was greeted by this morning at work



All I can say is TGIF

Wow what a weekend!

Wow, wow, wow. I just had SUCH a good weekend.
Miss C any myself decided to take monday off so we could have a 3 day weekend, no particular plans in mind, just thought it would be nice. What we ended up having was something much better than "nice"

We started off on Saturday morning, having decided the previous day that we would take a drive out to Martinborough to visit some vineyards and generally just enjoy the great weather. We were blessed with a beautiful day, for which we were well prepared with a convertible sports car, to take full advantage of the wonderful cloudless day.
We drove into Martinborough township just on lunchtime, couldn't have timed it better if we'd tried.

The first stop was a jewelry store that Miss C had taken a liking to on her previous visit on her 'work do'.
They had some really nice stuff, very cool original designs. Miss C was smitten with lots of items but we managed to leave without scaring anyones bank accounts.
We found a nice little cafe to have lunch, an open chicken salad sandwich for me and an open steak sandwich for Miss C. We both really enjoyed the lunch, wonderful Martinborough cuisine :)
Next it was off to do a few wineries.
The first place we stopped off at was rather non descript but they had a lovely Sav in their line for tasting. It tasted of passionfruit and was very crisp and clean. We came away with a bottle of that feeling very 'grown up' ;)
The next winery was chocca full so we didn't even bother going in, not much for waiting are we.
The next winery was also very busy, we stayed around just long enough for a cup of water an when we realized we weren't going to be getting any service because we obviously weren't the clientele they were looking for, we left.
The next winery was a complete turn around. We were greeted at the door with a smile and were even taken into 'the back room' to do our tasting. The guy who was serving us was a really nice genuine kind of guy and he told us all about the wines, how it had been 32deg the day before when he was out picking the grapes, as well as a handy suggestion that we head out to the coast to see the seal colony. We'd have never known about it if it wasn't for him.
We came away from there with a couple more bottles of wine, one of which was a lovely desert wine which we both enjoyed :)
We headed back to the main township because Miss C couldn't leave without getting a little 'something something' from the jewelry store. She found herself a very funky silver ring that she fell in love with (ahd has hardly left her finger since).
We stopped at the BP, grabbed a couple of cokes (in glass bottles of course) and headed off.

We decided we'd had our fill of wineries and it was off to find the coast.
We missed the turn off the first time but managed to find it on the way back. After that it was about an hours drive out through farmland which opened into a spectacular coastal scene.




We drove along the waterfront which was spectacular, going from metal to tar and back again.
The scenery was ever changing, there is some amazing rock formations around Cape Palliser
We stopped to take some pictures of the seals, some of them were showing off, posing for the camera.




I was telling Miss C how you have to be careful as the seals blend in with the rocks and it can be hard to see them sometimes. Look, see there's one there, and there, one behind that rock and OH! whoopsie, one right down beside me here too.

After the seals we headed on round to the lighthouse and being the wonderful day it was, decided to brave the stairs and climb up.




It was a bit of a slog but we made it and the view was definitely worth it.
Snapped some shots, walked back down and headed for home.








By the time we made it back to Miss C's place we were exhausted after having such a wonderful day.
We had a nice dinner, went through a bottle of wine between us and retired to bed.

TAFNR

I met a man who was a stick...

And the view today after the heavy rain and wind last night


and the beach Miss C and I took Aston to on sunday :)