Off up to the Coromandel Peninsular this morning. We won’t mention the trip over to Thames, as apart from the river bridge towards the end, the trip was undeniably Auckland and fairly boring. Luckily, we had plenty to talk about!

We stopped off at Coromandel for some lunch at Umu Restaurant. We made the mistake of having individual toasted sandwiches – they were HUGE!

We then toured around the peninsular and stopped off at Tairua for a coffee on the beach.

Down the coast then to Katikati for some afternoon tea, and a quick look around their historic farming collection, before heading down to Tauranga for our overnight hotel – Bennetts Tauranga Motor Inn.

The large family unit was pretty Kiwi but spacious, but it also had our own lovely thermal pool in the small courtyard out the back. We got everything in from the car, quickly got changed, grabbed some drinks (the alcoholic kind, of course) and jumped in the pool! We must have stayed in there for about 3 hours! It was brill! Margaret also found that the mineral properties of the pool worked wonders on the skin, which we hadn’t realised, but were pretty impressed with!!