In the Center of it All

On Dec 6, after a few days of slurping our way through Marlborough, we took the long way around to Nelson, a city whose claim to fame is being the geographical center of New Zealand. Our "long way" took us on the Queen Charlotte Drive, hopeful for some glimpses out into the Marlborough Sounds.  The drive was winding and pretty, but the weather wasn't the best for the look-out point vistas. It did, however, take us through the tiny coastal town of Havelock, where we stopped for their renowned green-lipped mussels.

Steamed and fried!

Upon reaching Nelson and settling into our hostel, we tempted weather fate and took to our feet to find the famed (?) Center of New Zealand.  We made our way through the sleepy town, then along a pretty little Matai River, and finally up a steep hill in a park where we found it!

Jason at The Center

Voila!

Having apparently not had our fill of wine, we set out the next day to sample the Upper Moutere region's wines, which were sort-of on the way to Abel Tasman National Park.  We had an enjoyable tasting and picnic lunch at Neudorf, followed by one of the more unusual tasting experiences we've had. We chose to visit a winery called Glovers, since our book advised that this eccentric winemaker preferred robust red wines, which are hard to come by on the south island.  I thought his license plate was promising...

... and inside a little house we were met by a slightly ornery old man who offered us a glass of rose out of an unlabeled bottlle, saying "this is what I'm drinking, and if it's good enough for me, it's good enough for you!"

The rose wasn't good at all, and neither were some of his whites, but a couple red blends were curiously unobjectionable. By the time we were done we felt badly walking away without making a purchase, so we took a 2002 Syrah-dominant blend back to enjoy with our porterhouse at our hostel that night. Thankfully, we also found it to be unobjectionable at this point as well.

Jason with the winemaker, David Glover

A little further up the road, we arrived at Abel Tasman National Park, home to one of the famous New Zealand walks, the Abel Tasman Coast Track which hooks along the Tasman Bay in the northwestern portion of the south island.  The total track is about 51km (32 miles) long, to be completed over several days, but as we were starting out around 4:30 without any intention of staying the night, we got a taste for it by walking about 5.5km along to a pretty little camping spot called Apple Tree Bay.  On our way back out of the park, the tide had receded and as the sun played through the clouds we were treated to some spectacular views.

Abel Tasman NP

As an odd aside, during our time driving around the Nelson/Richmond area, we gleaned that there is apparently a large market for livestock "poo," with bags of horse poo, donkey poo, and pony poo regularly advertised on hand-painted boards for $2 a pop.

Moving along... the two days that followed were less eventful - our primary objective being to get to Queenstown by Dec 9 in time to make final preparations for our big hike, scheduled to begin on the 10th. Our plans to do some en-route hiking in Nelson Lakes NP were foiled by the rain...

Drizzly day at Lake Rototiti

... which in the end was a good thing because the drive was a bigger undertaking than we expected, especially in the driving rain.  We made it to our overnight destination on the West Coast, Hokitika, in the late afternoon.  The sun came out on arrival, and we were able to enjoy our hostel room's private balcony that overlooked Tasman Sea.

Jason on the shore of Hokitika

And as planned on December 9, after a further 7 hours of driving via the Haast Pass, we arrived in Queenstown.  We picked up our hut passes and shopped around the numerous outdoor adventure stores for last-minute hiking supplies: iodine tablets for our water, bowls and utensils, and a "billy" - a simple metal pot perfect for cooking more or less anything (in our case, we really only needed it to boil water for ramen noodles).  We packed our backpacks with the things we'd need over the next few days, tossed everything else in our spare duffle bag, and did our best to rest up for the adventure ahead!

Hi Mom

Merry Christmas, especially to our two most loyal and enthusiastic readers -- we miss you!

(More blog coming soon!)

If They Ferment It, We Will Come

You might be aware: we like wine. A lot. However, New Zealand isn't a wine producing region I knew a lot about before this trip, and I was excited to get out and learn about what makes NZ special when it comes to vino.

As it turns out, this is a really good place to be oenophiles. Full of microclimates that can turn out world-class Sauvignon Blancs and Pinot Noirs, not to mention high quality Rieslings, Syrahs and Chardonnays, New Zealand is a relative newcomer to the global wine industry, making it a fascinating locale for wine tourism.

Upon arrival in the south island on Dec 4th, we didn’t waste any time in getting to know the goods of Marlborough, stopping to taste along the short 35km (22 mile) drive from the ferry to our lodging. After checking in to our accommodations earlier than expected, we made a few more stops right up until cellar door closing time (5pm).

Johanneshof Winery

Huia Winery

Vines at Huia

Our accommodations in the region turned out to be fantastic.  We had booked two nights in a “cottage” (a tiny self-contained studio) in the middle of the wine region.  The property was run by an English couple in their mid-60s who bought the property over the internet in 2008, having learned it was for sale a few years after vacationing there themselves.  They now serve as hosts, proprietors, and keepers of sheep, deer, bees, and chickens, the latter providing eggs for our morning meals.

Jason greeting from our front (only) door

Nobody here but us chickens

Not a bad spot for a nap

They also had bicycles to borrow, and so we tackled day 2 of our wine touring by pedal, cycling 30km (18 miles) around “flat” terrain, visiting 6 wineries on our route.  We started off the day taking our chances against a forecast calling for 50% chance of rain, and we cycled away from the clouds all day long, watching the rain fall on the hills that surrounded us but never getting wet riding around in the valley.

A cloudy day at Cloudy Bay winery

All geared up for a day of 2-wheeling

Picnic lunch w/pinot noir at Isabel Winery

The skies finally cleared for our final 5km ride home

Wine tasting in Marlborough, by the way, is a thoroughly enjoyable experience. For the most part, the tastings are free, and those rare few that aren’t charge 5 NZD ($4 USD), or *maybe* 10. Everyone is producing Sauvignon Blanc (of course) and Pinot Noir, but we were surprised to find a variety of styles of Chardonnay, Pinot Blanc, Gewürztraminer, Riesling, and even a Syrah here and there, most of which were made to a high standard.  Most interestingly, though, were the philosophies on production of the 2 main varietals. Everyone was quick to point out that Marlborough Pinot Noir was different from Otago (southern south island) Pinot Noir – the more well-known Pinot-producing region in New Zealand. They were polite as possible in pointing out that the Marlborough style is a more elegant, refined alternative to the big, jammy Pinots found in Otago.  And many of them were damn good, with more restrained fruit and earthy layers.  When it came to Sauv Blanc, it was refreshing to learn that Kiwi winemakers are starting to branch out from the characteristic grassy, grapefruity style and making the most of their individual terroirs to create more nuanced version of the country’s signature wine.

We were reluctant to move along after a couple amazing days of sipping our way around Marlborough, but know that amazing scenery and experiences await everywhere around here. And I have no doubt we'll be back to do some more "research!"

More pix can be found on Picasa - the links are at right.

All Was Well in Wellington

Greetings from New Zealand! We are thrilled to be back here, much sooner than anticipated. NZ was one of our hands-down favorite stops on our RTW trip in 2011, and it has not disappointed us on visit #2 either.

We has a relatively easy 12+ hour flight from LAX to Auckland, although losing December 1st entirely was a little disorienting. After a 5-hour layover in Auckland and a 50-minute flight to Wellington, we jumped right in to seeing what NZ's capital city has to offer.

Over our 2 night stay in Wellington, we began stretching our legs in anticipation of our 5-day "tramp" (hike) which begins tomorrow, Dec 10.  We visited the city's botanical gardens, and went for a couple hours walk in the preserved area called Otari-Wilton's Bush. Both regions were replete with tui birds, whose croaky-whistley-hooting sound entertained us while we walked.

Spiral cactus from the botanical garden

Tui bird - captivating for minutes on end!

We also spent a good amount of time exploring Wellington, a very laid-back port city with lots of places for lounging - including urban beachfront and an abundance of bean bag chairs outside of pubs.  Wellington is a University town and, as the capital, the home of Parliament.  It seemed to us that people got all dressed up to be industrious, but not much actually goes on there. It culminates in a chill, friendly vibe that made for a great kick-off to our trip.

Especially when people are giving out free beer and insist you sit in a bean bag to drink it.

5PM on a Tuesday - Wellingtonians know how to live!

It did seem to us that we were there at just the perfect time - that it was probably a couple of the first few beautiful days of summer and everyone leapt at the chance to be outside and bare some skin. Of course, this being New Zealand, the blue skies and sunshine were too good to last.  On a grey Wednesday morning we boarded our ferry and headed down to the south island for the next phase!

En route from Wellington to Picton

Road Trip Day 4

Day 4: California or bust!

Our final day on the road was the shortest of our 3 long days, barely.  It was also the prettiest - least cluttered with billboards and much more visually interesting than much of the rest of our drive.  Unfortunately, the phone-camera-from-a-moving-car shot requires a good imagination.  We'll definitely be back to this neck of the woods for more sustained appreciation.

Somewhere in Arizona

Highlights of this final leg include:

• Colorful mesas rising out of the desert
• Checking off 2 states (NM, AZ) and reaching our destination state (CA). If you're counting, that's 12 states from NY to CA.
• Spotting the following license plates: Nevada, Idaho, North Dakota... bringing our grand total to 47 states + DC and 2 provinces!
• Holding out hope for an Alaska or Hawaii spotting, and grumbling about how not one of the 833,000 residents of South Dakota happened to be driving on our route for 4 days.

• Being appropriately welcomed to LA by standstill traffic on the 605 as we were just miles from our final destination.
• The relief that came knowing that we AND our wine collection arrived without incident in Long Beach, about 6:15pm on Tuesday!

That's all folks!

Road Trip Day 3

On Monday, we woke up at the Best Western Plus North Little Rock feeling both amazingly well rested (the Best Western Plus North Little Rock has the best beds ever!) and smug for having decided to tack those extra 2 hours onto our Sunday travels. To be honest, we're STILL talking about how smart that was. Easily the best idea we had on the trip.

While this was easily the most visually boring day of the trip, we did still have some highlights: 

• Enduring a couple hours of morning drive country music radio to start the day as we drove through the most inclement weather of the trip (a pain-in-the-butt "wintery mix" that had sent several cars into ditches but thankfully not our trusty VW)
• Listening to 45-second traffic reports, warning drivers about icy bridges and overpasses, realizing that these brief reports are probably 3x longer than a typical report
• Briefly considering moving to the Little Rock area, citing extraordinarily short traffic reports
• Flirting with the idea of having Cracker Barrel for lunch, but ending up with a superior plan of dining at Van's Pig Stand in Shawnee, Oklahoma

How could this NOT be a good idea?!

Proof!

• Passing through Checotah, Oklahoma "Hometown of Carrie Underwood, American Idol Winner 2005"
• Absolutely nothing else in Oklahoma, much of which caused Jason to remark, "Yep, we're in Amerrr-ica."
• A freakish icy blast in northern Texas that turned the view from this:

   to this, in about 5 minutes:

• Marveling at the blanket of stars when the sky finally cleared in New Mexico
• Spotting 4 more state license plates (new total: 44 + DC)
• Checking off 3 more states (AR, OK, TX)
• Going to sleep knowing we only have 1 more day on the road!

Road Trip Day 2

Day 2: Up and out of Virginia at 6:30AM to tackle our first long day. 

We started Sunday with the goal of getting to Memphis, where we could enjoy some barbecue and walk on Beale street.  But as we faced the prospect of a 15-hour day on Monday, combined with the reports of the stormy winter weather coming from the Southwest and heading for our route, we called an audible and made our destination Little Rock, 2 hours past Memphis. 

Highlights of this stretch included: 

• Bacon-egg-and-cheese (salt pepper no ketchup)
• Spotting 12 more states license plates (running total: 40 + DC)
• Learning all about Tennessee's vices via the following billboards:
• The State's Largest Gun Shop!  THIS EXIT!
• NEXT EXIT: The South's Largest Adult Superstore!
• Tennessee's Biggest Moonshine Selection - DON'T MISS IT!
• Deducing that people actually purchase moonshine - and evidently in large quantity
• Checking off two states (VA, TN)
• Crossing the Mississippi - even if it was dark, it was still clearly large and impressive
• Finding a very dive-y pizza place with great beer and pretty darn good middle America pizza in Little Rock

Crossing the Mississippi!

Road Trip Day 1

Our road trip west is a little unconventional in that it both does not have classic road trip qualities (we will sadly not be stopping off to visit oddities like the world's biggest ball of twine, for example); and contradictorily we are also not taking the most direct route to our ultimate destination. But, since our interim destination is Long Beach (it's "on the way" to Portland), we are taking the southern route which allowed for our path to go through Virginia.

Highlights of this leg of the journey were:

• getting through 3 states (NJ, DE, MD)
• checking 28 states + DC off our license plate game list, plus 2 bonus points for Canadian provinces! (Most important spottings: Montana and Rhode Island)
• Jason's quotable moment: "This would be the heart of Jersey, if Jersey had a heart."
• learning what a Proving Ground is
• leaving the NJ Turnpike behind, reminiscing on the many hours we have spent on that godforsaken road.

Our stopover in Virginia brought us to the home of our friends Nicole and Ben, who graciously gave us their guest room for the night. Fortuitously, their gym was offering "parents night out" babysitting services, so we were able to go out to dinner and catch up while little Augie was looked after. It wasn't enough time for catching up after nearly a year and a half, but I was glad to have a few hours all the same. After a little too much wine and a short night sleep, we were up and at em again for Day 2!

Moving Out Day

Greetings from somewhere near Dixie Caverns, Virginia.  I'm going to attempt some road blogging via the Blogger app... please excuse any formatting challenges [edit: finally on a laptop!].

So Friday was Moving Out Day. Not fully Moving Day as we are doing this in phases, but this was definitively Phase 1. The movers showed up around 8am, took their sweet time, and left around 1pm with almost all of our stuff, most of which we had already packed up. What remained looked like this:

And after we packed it into our little VW Golf it looked like this:

We have packed in 550 lbs of wine and 400+ lbs of human and miscellaneous cargo, bumping up against the max payload and putting complete faith in quality German engineering over the next few days and 3000+ miles.

Our first stop on Friday after departing New York was a trip to northern New Jersey (slightly wrong direction!) where we enjoyed the excellent company, cooking, and hospitality of old friends Brian and Jamie Weinstein, along with a bonus visit with Larry and Shelly and lots of tickles from the Weinstein's kids. It all culminated in a fittingly warm and happy sendoff on our journey West.

(Thanks guys!)

Fire up the 'blog! We're on the move again...

I knew it had been awhile since I posted anything on the blog, although until today I did not realize it had been since January. As it turns out, documenting even the less ordinary parts of "real life" just didn't seem worthy of the time - which as any working stiff knows is simply too much of a scarcity.  We have kept our pictures up to date, many thanks to Jason, but neglected to blog about the various goings-on in our life since we moved back to NYC two years ago.

But, now that we are embarking on our next big adventure, it seemed time to dust-off the ol' WWW, give it a little facelift, and start writing again. I started this blog when we embarked on our London move,  and now that we're on our way out of New York again, certain to make new discoveries, come across entertaining cultural oddities, and have general (mis)adventures that will hopefully make good stories, I suspect we may have more worth sharing with family & friends near and far (well, mostly far as it turns out).

We're changing coasts, heading west to Portland, Oregon. (I am curious to find out if the cultural adjustment to Portland will be more or less challenging than the adjustment to London.) Before we land there, we're taking a bit of time to do some travel: a couple weeks visiting friends and family in Europe (hello from London!), a cross-country drive from New York to LA just in time for Thanksgiving, and lastly an extended holiday in New Zealand.  Then, we head north from LA to Portland.  After that... who knows!  We can't wait to find out!

(Hi Mom!)

Family Fun Time

Coming out of Christmas and thinking about getting my 2012 pix in order, I thought I'd start with those involving my family - known to many as "The LeMays of Portsmouth."  We had a few long weekends together this year, which seemed like as good a place as any to begin my recap. 

Then, it spiraled out of control. It turns out, I spent a lot more time out & about with my parents than usual this year.  In fact, although I didn't see them from last Christmas until April, after that we were visiting on a bi-monthly basis - probably more frequently than at any other point over the last 10+ years. (Except for, as I'm sure more than one person will rush to point out, the four months Jason & I spent living under their roof last year.  Like I said, 2011 was an odd one.)

So let's get started.  In April, M&D LeMay came to visit us in NYC.  They came for a weekend that started out well and ended poorly, with no fault of anyone's and we'll spare you the grisly details. Let's focus on the good.  We spent a gorgeous Saturday walking down the East Side of Manhattan, enjoying a bit of Central Park, hitting the Burger Joint at the Le Parker Meridian for lunch, and visiting the main branch of the NYPL.  We even happened across a parade!

Because it was a Scottish parade

Because I love a parade

Because it's New York

After that we visited an historic home on 4th Street (from a time when 4th Street was "uptown / the boonies," i.e. the 1850s), and went to a very enjoyable dinner at Hundred Acres (highly recommended). Shortly after, all hell broke loose, so we'll leave it at that.

I can sense already that a post about all the LeMay-of-Portsmouth Family 2012 Excitement is going to get long and out of hand, so I'm making the decision here and now that I will share 2 more events and save the rest for another time.  Like I said, it's my blog, thankyouverymuch.

Next up: Key West - or - Left Early, Forgot My Camera (all pix taken with Dad's camera or my phone).  No later than three weeks after the New York visit did my parents, brother and I descend on Key West, Florida for a long weekend - longer for some than others but we all overlapped for a few days.  Now, apologies to those of you who really love Key West, but Key West is a pretty tacky place. We managed to keep it classy by: 

... watching street performers on the pier - once.

... visiting the Hemingway House and its freakish cats.

... watching a cat stalk an iguana, poolside, for at least an hour.

... dining at Latitudes on Sunset Key.

... hanging out on Smather's beach.

... puttering around in the GEM.

...  buying "classy" shirts for our friends.

... visiting the "Southernmost Point" (you wouldn't believe the line!).

... getting some historical lessons at President Truman's Little White House.

... and, of course, posing with the 0-mile marker for Route 1.

It was actually a very nice weekend away with the fam - good weather, good company, good times had by all!

Lastly up for this installment: Maine & NH. I hopped a plane up north for a weekend in July, just to do some visiting.  Had a nice lunch out with Uncle Drew & Grammie, a typically over-indulgent dinner with the Franklins, and spent some QT with Mom & Dad.  We took an afternoon trip to Ogunquit where we ate ice cream and took a little boat tour out to Nubble Lighthouse.  What should have been a serene voyage ended up unexpectedly exciting due to some rocky seas, which the 2 boys behind us seemed to particularly enjoy. Having laughing kids nearby helps keep things real when your adult mind starts going "oh sh*t!". 

Ogunquit

Nubble Light

For sale!

And, because no trip to New Hampshire in the summer is complete without them, we feasted on lobsters before I hopped an early flight to New York on Monday morning!

Up next time: The LeMays take Charleston!