Monday 24 April 2017

Awakeri Rail Adventures

Hi there :)  Every now and then you get to experience something that you just HAVE to share with others... and this is one of those times.

On Friday, 21st April, Mum celebrated her birthday... she also celebrated her retirement!  Krystal thought this was worthy of a little getaway so she planned a couple of nights away at  Awakeri Springs.  We stayed in one of their cabins and it was perfect for our needs.  Nice and close to Whakatane for shopping and eating out... but just rural enough to be super quiet... and who could resist having a hot swim at the end of the day... certainly not us!

We didn't take any photos of the hot pools at night but it's really lovely... and best of all, on our second night we had the entire pool to ourselves!

Getting back to Friday... when Krystal was booking our accommodation she saw a link to Awakeri Rail Adventures and decided to do a bit of investigating.  It sounded really good and she even managed to get us some discount vouchers from Grab One so we were all in... and what an AWESOME time we had!

Our host (the owner) was Paul and he was hilarious.  Right from the moment we arrived we felt like he was on old family friend.  Paul had an excellent sense of humour, he was witty and had some fabulous one-liners... and his impressions of Prince Charles and the Queen were beyond funny!

You travel on the rail adventure inside self-driven rail carts and since Mum and I both had our cameras Krystal decided that she would be our chauffeur.  Between us we took almost 500 photos during our three-hour adventure... Mum took 342 of them!

I decided to do something a little different this time so I used Kerri Bradford's - Travelers Templates #3 to record our trip.  I really like all the white space and the clean, uncluttered layout.

Here's how it turned out:
Page 1

Page 2

Page 3

I really loved using these templates and how easy they were to use.  I don't actually have a travelers notebook but I think I might print these pages off and add them to a spiral notebook in my stash.

After we finished our rail adventure we took Mum to The Whitehouse Cafe for lunch.

We had a yummy lunch but the highlight for me was without doubt the old fashioned lemonade float.  They make their own lemon syrup and lemon sorbet for this little delight... and it was just eye-twitching enough to be tangy but refreshing!

So there you have it... a birthday celebration and the start of a happy retirement.

Thanks so much for stopping by today xx

2 comments:

  1. Thank you Shelley and Krystal for a wonderful birthday/retirement weekend. I thoroughly enjoyed all our activities. Feeding the chickens and plummets (fluffy Geese) was so entertaining and the hot swim in the evening was fabulous. Krystal even made me a birthday cake, carrot and cream cheese. What's not to enjoy. THANK YOU

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  2. What a wonderful way to celebrate Erin's birthday and retirement. xx

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Thanks, Shell xx