Yesterday morning Willow woke at 5.30am. I know, I know, your baby gets you up early every morning, but that was three hours ahead of our usual schedule and I was correspondingly shorted on sleep. I spent the first half hour thinking she would go back to bed if I applied enough cuddles and lullabies, and when that failed I grudgingly started the day in a semi-comatose state. By 11am I was incoherent with exhaustion, so I made JSR get up and flopped back into bed.
At 12.30pm JSR woke me up again. “You should fix your hair”, he said. “Why, do we have visitors here?” I asked while stumbling to the mirror and trying to hide the fact that I hadn’t washed my hair that morning. “No, no visitors! By the way, if you were going out, is that what you would be wearing?”. At this point it was obvious there was some plan afoot, but he would say no more until a couple of minutes later the doorbell rang and our friend Rochelle appeared. I said goodbye to JSR and Willow, still rather suspicious of the whole business, and Rochelle and I joined Rob and Nat in the car outside.
We drove south, south, south to our destination, the Zealong Tea Estate in Gordonton. I didn’t even know New Zealand had a tea farm, but we do, and my friends had booked us on their Tea Tour. Our guide took us along a tea walk telling us about oolong tea and the estate, before we watched some videos of their tea production, observed a tea ceremony, and tasted the three types of oolong tea Zealong produces.
We then had high tea, accompanied by more cups of oolong:
Apologies for the cellphone photos in this entry, I didn’t have my camera.
Not a traditional high tea, that’s for sure! The savoury options were all okay but the sweets were frankly quite regrettable, with the exception of the chocolate mousse. However, as a nibble-a-holic I enjoy pretty much any occasion where I get to eat tiny bites of different foods ;)
The visit was a lot of fun, particularly as a surprise on a day where my other plans amounted to scrubbing milk out of the carpet and perhaps playing some video games. I have brilliant friends – and a husband who is good at keeping secrets, as apparently this has been planned for a long time!
Our day wasn’t done after Zealong, as we also visited Candyland (strange place, “candy mausoleum” declared Rob), the Pokeno Bacon store, and then Giapo!
I brought back the weirdest candy I could find at Candyland for JSR. Actually they are quite yummy, though you’d better believe we have been making them dance around while singing Happy Feet before eating each one.
This is actually Rochelle’s tub of Giapo, as I wanted to show you the brilliant colour of the Beetroot & Rosemary flavour. I went with more pedestrian choices, Blueberry Muffin and White Chocolate & Coconut.
Finally we picked up some additional dinner supplies, and came back to our house to have a late dinner with JSR. Willow was already in bed, but I got to see her when she woke up for a little while. Lovely lovely friends-and-food-filled day!
