In the weekend I headed to Ohakune for a friends baby shower, mum and I decided to make a weekend of it so we stayed the night. On the way over I took the quickest route, the Napier/Taihape Road. And while there is nothing technically wrong with this road (well not by NZ standards I would say... its pretty pot holed but where isn't these days) it was not the funnest drive to do. There are very few cars you will meet so its a pretty lonely drive, and I am pretty sure if anything happened you would be screwed as there is also likely no cell reception. Not tested this as I was driving lol. Got to Ohakune in pretty good time though, and then met up with mum and we headed to the baby shower. Nothing wrong with the baby shower but I don't think I have been to one I have actually enjoyed yet, they are definitely things I attend out of obligation and nothing else.
On the bright side though, our accommodation was quite nice and we went to the most amazing place for dinner. It was an Italian restaurant and they squeezed us in which was very nice of them, we didn't have a booking and I think we probably should have. But wow did they do amazing food, and were very aware of the difference between gluten free and celiac which was great. I also didn't think it was too expensive, was middle of the road I would say which was nice. It was called Osteria and I would highly recommend it if you are in the area.
After discussing it with mum I decided to go home via a different, longer route. I was going to go via Taupo but then we realised that going via Fielding wasn't that much longer so decided to go that way. I've done the Napier/Taupo Road enough recently and have a few more trips on it coming up, so no need to add another one in. So South I headed on Sunday to get home, and it was such a wonderful trip. Fred and I just chilled and followed our noses to figure out our way back to Hastings (no googlemaps needed for us hehe), we had good music cranked up (thanks Billy Joel, Dolly Parton, Taylor Swift and Imagine Dragons), and had no time we had to be back by so could stop whenever/wherever we liked. We took some pics to share with you guys, and just cos we wanted to :) so I would say the longest route was by far better than the quickest route, atlst for me in the wknd it was.
