Napier Jewel of Hawkes Bay

Now onto to a familiar Place in The Sun. The Heinzies moved to Napier in the 70’s and we have been going down for many weekends of fun and frivolity over the past 30 years.
The people remain the same, the house and dogs have changed.
Currently there is Dejos a Briad. Hairy Maclary “personified”…A friendly chap, the apple of his parent’s eyes. Luckily for Dale he didn’t take such a fancy to him as had Tessa in Blenheim. He’s a big lad and when he treads on your toes you know all about it.

But once again before I digress too much… first we had to get there.
Another lovely day it’s cooled a little but still sunny.
We are of course on the other eastern side of the North Island and we now have a view of the wind farm from here. Unfortunately the photo was taken whilst driving and is a little out of focus but hopefully you get the picture

It is an amazing sight..
Danniverke settled as you might gather by the Danes
They greet you with a wonderful sign

We stopped for coffee.
Annie’s Café
Coffee bit boring, Cheese Scone OK but not up to our standard on this trip.
Décor but mumsy.
So we left
Farvel Danniverke

Now here’s a coincidence I have been wishing to get some shots of pubs There are some great old specimens and we seemed to have missed a lot of them…but this time we made an effort and here is the pub at Waipukarau

Mary Heinz father was a publican many years ago and it turns out this was one of his pubs. The Heinzies have been full of historical facts…Mary’s Pub and Graham’s ancestor, a founder of Akaroa. So there you go.

Napier is a pretty city in Hawkes Bay renowned for wine and was one of the fruit and bowls of New Zealand. You can still get wonderful local produce. Also responsible for many people going off the rails in the Blossom Festival Weekend held in the 50’sand 60’s. Train loads of teenagers had a wonderful time drinking too much, staying up all night... you know what teenagers do?

Now more refined they have an excellent Art Deco weekend in March. A group of us came for the festivities . Everyone probably still drinks too much but it's a better class of alcohol.

And we can't stay up all night any more.

Lana and her friend Lisa dressed up for the occasion

Heinz House has a lovely outlook

with some interesting friends on the deck

In this “Home Stay” we have our own self contained flat.
Open the doors and how about this for a lookoutOf course we had a big night. There were guests. Brian and Lorraine and Elaine.
You could see this was turning out to be good and it was.
Mary always makes great pate and also her own hummus
Then a little delight from

Chef Michael Smith

Salmon Poached in Orange Juice

Reduce 2 cups freshly squeezed orange juice

Skin and season your salmon with sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
Add some finely sliced red onions and capers
Poach salmon filet gently in the juice

Garnish with spring onion maybe a little dill would be nice.

It is nice at room temp erature.
Yours truly obviously having to be first in.

Mary cooked a lovely leg of lamb with asparagus, potatoes and salad and dessert
It was all very tasty.
A good nights sleep…walk the dog and into town for some retail therapy.
Mary works at a delightful shop and our lucky little kids have got new Christmas Tree ornaments.

A fairly quiet afternoon and then a tour of the garden by Mr Heinz.

Now we have been in some great gardens on this trip but this is a real working one.
He has everything most impressive. All the vege you could hope for and unlike my father who had a superb vege garden there is also a wonderful array of flowers.
Very pretty.

A wonderful kitchen garden laden with herbs. There will be tomatoes, chilies and potatoes etc to come. Mr Heinz will be busy bottling.

Mr Heinz climbing into his lemon tree to grab a bag of lemons for us

Cape gooseberries so sweet

A low key night easy dinner. Our dessert below and then it was farewell Heinzies we are off to East Cape

I would award this establishment
♥♥♥♥♥
Best working garden, a real live Hairy Maclary, good bed, great food, great wine, nice to have your own flat, good music and plenty of laughs and reminiscing

PS
Hairy Maclary is the main character in a series of excellent childrens books by Lynley Dodd

They can be purchased on amazon.com
This print is off the Artlands Website you can purchase gorgeous prints
From the website here