But more of the C’Est La Vie later.We spent a pleasant day reading and walking and generally taking it easy.
We are staying at a Top Ten Holiday Park which is a site where you can have Motel rooms, Cabins, park your Motor home or pitch a tent.
For the campers and cabins which have no cooking or washing facilities ,unlike the Motor Homes which have loo’s, sinks, refrigerators etc ,the site provides good cooking facilities with ovens, microwaves, toasters and sinks and of course showers and loo’s.
What we cannot understand is that most tourists seem to rent a Motor Home/Campervan and these are not cheap and start at about NZ 160.00 for a smallish unit up to NZ 250.00 for quite an acceptable size one. The idea of a Motor Home is that you can park anywhere and try the excellent Government sites which are usually in beautiful reserves and conservation areas but they have limited facilities apart from water and sometimes it might have a shower of questionable temperature.
However, most of the Motor Home people seem to gather at the type of site we are currently staying at and why we do not know. It seems pointless to us to spend all that money renting a mobile home and then pay again for the similar facilities at the site. Site costs for tents are around NZ 30/40 per day and Motor Homes pay around NZ 50 of 60 per day on top of your vehicle hire costs. Oh well its all good for business I suppose. One surprising thing though is that the vans are parked about five feet apart but on nose to tail around two feet and so they are very crowded. We think that there might be a fire risk as in the UK our Camping and Caravan Club sites insist on at least three metres each side of a unit. Our tent site is fairly large and we have about a third of an acre to ourselves as there are very few campers.
We are on a TOP 10 Holiday Park site; this would tend to indicate there are only ten locations in the country but in fact there are about forty eight or so dotted around North and South islands. We must say the general standard is very high.
Now back to the restaurant. Earlier in the week we had been talking to the land owner of the Holiday Park site and they had recommended a French cuisine restaurant called C’est La Vie, which although being quite small, is very good indeed. For your added information Akaroa was founded by French settlers back in the 1800’s and still retains its French characteristics and many road names and shops are using French names.
Anyway the restaurant does not have a proper menu card but uses blackboard’s in the front door porch area to describe what food is on offer whilst the seating is very much restricted to about twenty six seats and in most cases you share tables. Our table partners turned out to be a retired Britannia Airways pilot and his wife. He was nice and friendly but his wife was a real dour individual and even rejected the perfectly cooked venison as it had some red blood showing. The husband wanted to enjoy the evening by getting a bottle of wine but his wife refused and he had one glass of house red and looked a bit pissed off.
Our food was excellent and we both had scallops in a mushroom cream sauce with half a ton of garlic and they were so soft and tender. Jennifer had the venison with the blood and Noel had the Scottish Filet steak and together with a bottle of Australian Merlot it was great. Their kitchen was extremely small and the chef uses only a conventional house oven! Mine hosts seem to be a German lady but we are not sure of the nationally of the husband and together with one kitchen helper catered for two sittings at 6.30 pm and 8.30 pm and they were full
Our table had spaces for eight guests but we could not easily talk up the table but did hear that this place may close at the end of this summer season ie in a few weeks time. Most shops are now moving to winter time here.
Oh what a lovely day!
