Ive had worse views from a hotel

On the website, "guaranteed mountain/lake view" was in the description. Being a sceptical kind of chap, I always believe there will be about 3 inces of either mountain or lake on display when I see descriptions like that. Not today! This view from the bedroom is clearly fantastic and this is just one view from one room in the apartment, we had a full 180 view from the lounge and 90 degree from the bedrooom. You know it's gonna be a good day when you wake up to this.

We popped out for breakfast to what is becoming our usual cafe in Wanaka. Managed to sit outside in the shade today, made a plesant change from the busy inside and much cooler too. After checking out of the hotel we had a lot of time to kill so what better than to take a drive. Obviously we had forgotten to bring any of the 4 bottles of sunscreen we have and it was going to be a clear sky and high temperature in a country with very little ozone layer. So we bought yet more, factor 50 this time because I intended to spend the day in the sun. Cromwell is about 55km away and seemed like the natural choice to go and buy a bottle of powerade. It is when you are in a convertable on the west coast of New Zealand and you can fly through Central Otago's vinyard and crop covered landscape. Theres even a very handy sign to let you know you are crossing the 45th paralel as you approach Cromwell.

Back to Wanaka and the National Toy and Transport Museum, one of the worlds largest private collections of old toys, cars, planes, military vhicles, fire engines, type writers, teddy bears and dolls. Some things have been neatly displayed and laid out so visitors can enjoy their experience and look at childhood toys and relive memories of breaking lego and playing with Star Wars figures. I know I did. The rest is somewhat of a jumble, there are literally planes in with cars in with televisions in with corgi cars that arent with the rest of the corgi cars but are next to the real life fire engines. and thats just one of the four buildings. Theres also a bunch of rusting things lined up out the back for your amusement.

After all that excitement, lunch consisted of fish n chips then the road home beckoned. Its definately more fun to drive up the crown range than down it, the factor 50 kept me from completely burning alive but didnt stop the heat fatigue on me or my ipod which overheated in the sun. A 2 hour nap was very much needed on arrival home. Another drive was also needed, this time up part of the Glenorchy road in the dark. A road that reminded me very much of the stretch between Callander and Lix Toll in Scotland. That was the perfect way to end the trip and with another of my favourite wineries from Marlborough to round off the night cuddled up on the couch, things couldn't get much better.