Christmas

Another beer-themed post this time – there’s just a lot of good beer in this country!

We started off December with a trip to Beers at the Basin, a festival at Wellington’s cricket ground. About 20 breweries set up stands where you could sample their beers, and there was live music throughout the day. We had a great time and would highly recommend it.

You might remember a while back that Ash got me a ‘brew your own beer’ voucher for my birthday. It has now finished brewing and we are drinking our way through it. I’m really happy with how it turned out – I wouldn’t feel mugged off if I payed for it in a pub.

Next we went for a walk with our friend Harriet to Orongorongo. This is only ten miles out of Wellington but it feels like proper wilderness. 

We have driven up to Ash’s family in Tauranga for Christmas. To break up the journey, we stopped at the NZ army museum, which was surprisingly good. They had this model of New Zealand’s attempt to manufacture a tank (the short story – it wasn’t very good) and these examples of art that soldiers made in their spare time out of old ammunition cases.

We had taken our friend David along with us for the drive as his family lives in Hamilton, which is the same general direction that we were going. 

On Christmas day, we sat outside and drank a lot of champagne and beer. Ash’s parents gave us some folding camp chairs, a gas cooker and a kettle so we need to start planning some camping trips.