After a very good sleep, we set off to explore the little town of Blenheim today (Tues 14th) The weather was rather blustery, the edge of the bad weather in the north. It’s fairly modern and low level, and is surrounded on all sides by many, many vineyards. We were surprised to learn that wine growing didn’t start here until as late as the 1980s and wasn’t well established until the 1990s. We collected our hire car from the airport - I won’t even go into the palaver we went through to hire it, and headed straight to the iconic Cloudy Bay Winery. It was not far - in fact all of the vineyards are nearby. It is extremely smart, all wood and glass, with a welcoming visitor centre and a restaurant. We were soon set up at a table with snacks and James chose four wines to taste. These visitor centres are called Cellar Doors, and not all of the vineyards have them, but plenty do. We had a lovely time there, and James bought a bottle of wine to drink back at the hotel.
We then spontaneously visited the Aircraft Museum, because we had seen so many signs to it! We knew it would be very small, but in fact it was surprisingly excellent. The highlight for me was a very good wrap-around immersive experience where you are in a bombed building during the battle of Stalingrad with planes bombing and crashing all around. It was very realistic. Then the film changes to the statistics of how many soldiers and airmen from all the different countries died in the various campaigns of the 2nd World War. It was well conveyed and very shocking - especially the stats from the Eastern front. So many Germans died, but exponentially more Russians. Terrible. Back at the hotel we had a nice dinner and an early night.
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