Last weekend we paid a final visit to our favorite place in New Zealand: the Wairarapa.  To mix things up a little, we stayed in Martinborough at the Martinborough Hotel.  We usually stay in Greytown at the Greytown Hotel which is significantly cheaper, but since it was our last weekend we wanted to try something different and go out in style.

The Cameron Room

Before checking into our hotel, we stopped at the Cambridge Road Vineyard (our favorite).  Normally the winery is closed on Fridays, but the wonderful couple who owns the place drove up just as we did and agreed to let us in.  To show our thanks, we bought a bottle of their special vintage reserve pinot noir (they only had one case left) and headed to our hotel.  We also bought a pack of cigarettes…. Oh yes, we did.  We cheated on our quit smoking plan and it was heavenly.

If you are not a smoker, or have not ever been in the process of quitting smoking, I can not explain the pleasure of drinking an amazing bottle of wine on the verandah of our hotel while smoking several cigarettes.  Let’s just say your lungs might be squeaky clean but you haven’t really lived.

On our way out of town on Saturday, we stopped by the local fresh veggie market to have our final homemade strawberry ice-cream cone.  Once again non-smokers, I can attest to the fact that homemade strawberry ice-cream is almost as good as smoking. And so is taking a bath in this bathtub at the hotel:

But smoking while in the tub? Well, nothing beats that.

A special thanks to the Southerner for making the weekend possible and indulging all of my “oh, I just want to go to this place one last time,” requests. His presence in my life is one of the few pleasures that I can definitely say is better than smoking.