After checking out of the hotel at 10am and packing up the car, we walked into town to do a little shopping at the local souvenir shop.
On our way out of town we stopped at one last winery before beginning our trek back to Nelson, Huia. The small tasting room was staffed by a woman from Portland, Valerie, who was living overseas and working at the winery to pay for her time in a shared house in Marlborough. We tried most of the range, including wines from their cheaper label, Hunky Dory, over the course of 1.5 hours. In general, the wines were pleasant enough, the ’11 Organic Pinot Noir and ’16 Organic Sauvignon Blanc were the standouts.
One place we HAD to stop was The Mussel Pot in Havelock. The mussels were enormous! One kilo per order was more than enough for me and some of them could have been cut in half. I choose the cream, basil and garlic broth (chef’s fave according to our waiter) which was very nice and even better with a bit of bread dunked in (ordered separately). While the mussels were great, I could have easily split the serving size and this was the only place that charged us a $1 for ‘extra’ ketchup for Eric’s fries. A bit stingy really.
We had some time to kill before we needed to be at the airport, so Eric routed us up north of Nelson to Cable Bay for some scenic views. The drive was lovely and we enjoyed the vistas from the beach spit between the mainland and Pepin Island, joined by a tidal sandbar.
After filling up the car with gas, we stopped in for a quick half pint at another location of Sprig & Fern. I had the Scottish Ale and Eric ordered the seasonal pilsner which was light and crisp.
We dropped off the car and caught the shuttle to the airport, checked our bags without incident and waited about 30 minutes to board our short flight to Auckland. Once again, since it was a small domestic flight we had no security screening, which meant we were able to bring our half-finished bottle of wine up to the North Island in the main cabin. I imagine this is going to change in the future, but it was nice to not have to dump half a bottle of wine or slam the smoothie drink I hadn’t gotten around to enjoying yet!