Visitors galore ...

Apologies for the sporadic entries on the blog. We've had a lot of visitors from the San Francisco area the past couple of weeks and things have been very hectic between making them feel at home and getting some work done.

The first group of visitors were the Dierkings from Sonoma, CA. JD, Liza, Sophie (6 years) and Matt (4 years) visited us for 4 days a week and a half ago. It was awesome to have more kids in the house and the two sets of kids got along very well. Sophie played the big sister role and took care of the other kids very well. The Dierking's had a whirlwind trip, flying into Auckland on Friday morning. They spent the day visiting the Sky Tower and the Kelly Tarlton Aquarium before jetting down to Rotorua. Did a couple of cultural activities and the geysers in Rotorua on Saturday and stayed overnite there before driving to Wellington Sunday evening. Then on the Interislander Monday morning to Picton and drove into Nelson. We had a good dinner of a rocket, avocado, blue cheese and egg salad, lamb shank with roasted potatoes and carrots and mac and cheese. The food and wine (Neudorf Sauvignon Blanc and Rimu Grove Pinot Noir 2004) were quite delicious. The next day they went to Morrison Cafe in the morning and had lunch at the Smokehouse cafe in Mapua. They had stayed in Ruby Bay when they honeymooned here 9 years ago. So this was more of a flashback. We met them at the Richmond wave pool and had a blast before doing our customary Sushi dinner on Tuesday night. On Wednesday, Mari and Liza crafted a glass paper weight at Hogland glass factory and then all of us went to Kaiteriteri Beach. Its amazing that kids are just so happy to play with sand, water and rocks and can spend hours doing that. We headed back to Nelson and offered to take care of their kids for the evening.

They visited our current favorite restaurant Hopgood's and came back with rave reviews (JD mentioned the duck was quite excellent, and Liza liked her fish dish). We took the kids to Steffano's pizzeria (above the State cinema) and had pretty good pizza. We ordered the kids an individual child pizza which we assumed would be fairly small. However the child pizza was pretty close to size as the regular pizza (its a great deal at half the price and each kid can have their own taste catered for!). The pizza was quite good and definitely well worth a revisit. We met them at the Boat Shed for lunch before they continued their whirwind tour of Blenheim, Kaikoura and Christchurch. The food at Boat Shed was very good, though the service left a lot to be desired. Mari and I also came to the conclusion that we've OD'ed on mussels and need to stay away from them for the next few months. They also visited the Bead Factory in Nelson earlier that day and mentioned it was a good place for kids Sophie's age and older. You need to be aware of what beads you choose, else you can end up making a very expensive bead necklace.