Dec 15, 2009 - Volendam, Holland America - Picton, NZ

Today was another great day…we had to spend most of the morning preparing our reminder notices to our clients for the private excursion and the guest comment cards. It was not as warm as yesterday, but sunny and at least now we are prepared. Picton is a very small city, it’s the northern most city in the South Island. There are some beautiful gardens, a few small museums with Maori artifacts and explanations of the earliest settlers. Very hilly everywhere and hiking trails all over the place. An amazing place for trout fishing and in the Marlborough county many, many wineries. The excursion we went on in the afternoon toured the Picton countryside, the valley, and we visited 3 wineries and taste tests. It was interesting, some were very good, some were very bad. All depends on your taste. Many bought bottles and brought it back to the ship. At least today we didn’t have much rain at all. Barely a sprinkling every now and then while we were on the bus, but that’s about it. Tonight was the Chef’s Master Dinner with the singers and dancing waiters. Fair… not great. We are only 56 miles from our next Port of call, Wellington, so we are not going very far out into the waters. Not much going on tonight. Working in the room. Hoping for another great day tomorrow in Wellington.......