June 3, 2016
The actual town of Blenheim covers a large area but is so laid back that it feels much smaller than it is. One of its prettiest features is the walk along the river that runs through the town, and the best place to start this walk (at least we think so) is by having breakfast at a place called Raupo.
Raupo has very much the same style as the wineries we’d visited: lots of wood, stone, and glass walls. Our breakfast there was delicious, the river views very pretty. It’s hard to imagine there’s a nicer place for breakfast in Blenheim than this.
Unfortunately there was one fly in the punchbowl. It came for a swim when Rich looked at the weather and discovered that, once again, our next weather window had dissipated. We’d promised ourselves we’d head north if this happened but were still really reluctant to do so.
Rich then emailed Bob McDavitt who confirmed our thoughts: we needed to get further north in New Zealand and find a weather window from there. Crap. And we had a weather window to get north only if we left really early in the morning. Double crap. Our vacation was suddenly over. But wait; this was wine tasting. Wine tasting fixes stuff like this. It doesn’t make it go away; it makes you just not care so much. So we decided to stay with our plan to visit a few more wineries, have some lunch, then head back to Nelson in the afternoon.
We took a stroll along the river to sort ourselves out. It was a beautiful walk but the signs of fall were impossible to ignore, more reminders that it was time to head north. We decided to take the time to enjoy this last day then head out before dawn tomorrow. Below, some pictures of the river walk in Blenhiem. (Click to enlarge and scroll through any of the photo galleries.) –Cyndi
