The thud

I had the most surreal day earlier this week. One minute a waiter was making me toast on a luxury small ship, the next I was hopping on a ferry to a delightful spot called Waiheke Island for lunch at a winery, the next I was racing to Auckland Airport and four hours later I was back in Sydney.

Oh and the next morning at 8am I was back at my desk in The Rocks.

Whoa my head spinning, and not from the wine!

We stepped off the ship on Tuesday morning and stowed our suitcases at a place called The Luggage Hotel then climbed on another boat to have one last adventure during our holiday, a day trip to Waiheke Island.

As the New Zealand tourism website describes it: “Waiheke is a haven of beautiful vineyards, olive groves and beaches, all just a 40-minute ferry ride from downtown Auckland.”

We bought tickets for the hop-on-hop-off bus that tours the island and headed to Onetangi Beach for a Diet Coke with a gorgeous view at Charlie Farley’s as we contemplated where to enjoy the last lunch of our holiday.

We decided on Batch Winery, situated on one of the highest peaks of Waiheke Island. We settled into a table with the most spectacular view while we ate oysters with cheese and leeks, lamb ribs with smoked eggplant puree, seared fish with macadamia, dried tomato and olives and a pear and walnut salad. Oh, and a couple of glasses of wine!

I was feels very zen and glamorous after our meal … until DD saw a sign to a waterfall and dragged me down literally 500 steps to check it out.

I kept reminding him that we would need to climb BACK UP the 500 steps but he did that male thing of refusing to back down or turn around and kept on hiking.

When he finally saw the drizzling waterfall he was very underwhelmed and said he wasn’t going to bother going the extra five steps to take a photo, but I put my foot down and insisted through gritted teeth on a smiling selfie despite wanting to murder him in cold blood …

My blood was anything but cold by the time I climbed back up those 500 stairs, so DD hastily hailed a cab and took me to the local gelato shop in Oneroa for a soothing scoop of honeycomb flavoured goodness.

After a harrowing peak-hour drive to the airport we clambered onto a very full flight back to Sydney, during which I cried a lot about returning to the reality of the youngest leaving me to go to university while DD nervously patted my arm.

The next morning we discovered half the ship had caught COVID and I spent the day panicking I was coming down with it too, but I think it was just dizziness from finally drinking proper coffee again.

It was very miserable to head to work after being idle for so long and seeing so many beautiful things.

And then yesterday DD deserted me – he’s gone to London for a conference for a week or so.

It’s all been very back-to-earth thuddy.

Oh for one last steak bernaise at sea …

Ah well, I must focus really hard on how lucky I am to have enjoyed such a lovely holiday and start planning the next one!

Stay tuned as there are quite a few conferences in DD’s future and I might tag along to one or two.

Song of the day: The Communards “Don’t leave me this way”