Our Hawke’s Bay photo diary

Hi! As you know, we spent a couple of weeks in Hawke’s Bay over Christmas, enjoying time with family, catching up with friends, and celebrating our ten year wedding anniversary. We haven’t been down there in nearly two years, and we haven’t spent such a long time down there in absolutely ages, so it was such a wonderful opportunity to get such a decent break! Here are some photos of our trip, if you’d like to see…

It’s a decent drive from Mangawhai to Hawke’s Bay so we made sure to break up the trip with multiple stops where Amelie could get some energy out. The first stop was Cambridge – actually the same place we stopped last time we drove to Hawke’s Bay for Christmas when Amelie was just one! They have a farmer’s market on a Saturday, so we could have coffee and snacks, and Amelie had the chance to play in an open space. After our snacks we bought some apricots for the road, then headed across to this horse so Amelie and I could re-create this picture from three years ago because I am super-lame. 😂

We had a lovely, relaxing few days before Christmas, going berry picking with Amelie’s cousins, swimming with her grandparents in their pool, and of course, the fun nuttiness of Christmas itself…

Then it suddenly got bizarrely, terribly cold for a few days. I’ve learnt a valuable lesson about not taking jackets away with me in New Zealand, even in the middle of summer! We hit up some indoor activities like the aquarium and waited patiently for it to warm up again.

It definitely wasn’t exactly hot for a while there but we still got outside for the important things (playgrounds x 1000, late afternoon wines by the water, and enjoying new Christmas presents!)

Much of Napier is extraordinarily flat and that feels so weird to me, having grown up in the 50 volcano-strong place that is Auckland. I went for a few runs and walks where I headed up every hill I could find.

For our anniversary, I insisted we do the same! We hiked up Te Mata Peak and it was so fun and so outrageously beautiful. This was the beginning of our ‘time to ourselves’ that we had pre-booked for Amelie’s grandparents to look after her, but in reality they were amazing and looked after her all the time for us, without even asking…it was incredible for Hayden and me to be able to spend so much time together, and Amelie loved having so much one-on-one time with her Fossil and Granma!

We did, of course, also do some relaxing, including enjoying lunch and wine tastings at Craggy Range and Elephant Hill (the same place we got married!). These two, plus the very cool Beach House Wines, are hands-down my favourite wineries in Hawke’s Bay. We had the front part of the roof off the Jeep, and we followed the sunshine out to Waimarama Beach for some sunbathing and an ice cream!

It was such a great time. Gotta love such a chill holiday!