A girls night out
hens night, shopping, cuisine and fun
Hens nights can be horrifically tacky affairs: tipsy women weaving through nightclubs, one of them wearing what looks like a shower curtain. For a classy hens' event, make it a weekend - and make it a place like Taupo. Nellie Wright refects on a girlies getaway.
It's something of a miracle that we managed to find a weekend this side of the wedding when we were all free, Ever tried to get five working women to synchronise diaries and plan anything longer than a cappuccino? 'Nuff said. But the greater miracle - and what brings us together this weekend - is that Jo, the youngest of us, is getting married. Blimey, we thought she'd never find anyone who measured up, but we happily admit we were wrong. The big walk down the aisle is six weeks away, and it is our job, this weekend, to mark this new chapter in her life.
We're all way too old for the classic get-drunk-and-make-the-bride-wear-a-sign-saying-kiss-me kind of night on the town. We wanted to shop, we wanted to eat fabulous food, we wanted a beautiful environment. Which is how we find ourslves, on a crisp Friday evening, with our jaws on the ground, inside The Top House - an incredibly beautiful, self-catering, beach house on the shores of Lake Taupo. At one end of a huge, matai-floored room, an enormous fire is burning; and the sun setting over the lake is framed by ceiling-to-floor windows the length of the room. Built on Whakamoenga Point, The Top House sleeps 12 easily and all the beds can be made up as single or king-single. Perfect for a group of friends or for families. It is so luxuriously cosy we could quite happily spend the entire weekend nestled inside. But this is a hen weekend after all - and we have some serious spending to accomplish. When I told an Auckland colleague where I was going, she said Taupo was the perfect combination of big and small. Funky bars, she said, cosmopolitan food and enough good shoe shops to justify some serious crdit card damage - along with the friendliness of a smaller town and more outdoor activities than you could poke a stick at. You can even get good coffee, she said, as though, outside Auckland, that was something of a coup.
We end up having a casual but very yummy Mexican dinner at S.O.B. There is somehting satisfying about being able to toss your peanut shells on the floor. The next morning, the views from The Top House have to be seen to be believed. We drink coffee out on the deck in the sunshine, followed by a late breakfast at Replete, a cafe which has become something of a Taupo institution. I eat mushrooms on mega-grain toast and marvel, in a big-city-girl kind of way, at the $6.50 price tag.
The shopping, however, sets us back a tad more than that. Horomatangi Street, HeuHeu Street - never mind that we can't pronounce the names, we are in heaven. Retail heaven. Back to The Top House for an afternoon nap. OK so that makes us sound like nanas - but with bedrooms this gorgeous, who wouldn't.
The other reason for coming to Taupo - aside from satisfying both the shoppers and the outdoors enthusiasts amoung us - is that Jo is getting married here. When one waits this long to get married, one can jolly well choose a fabulous location and demand all guests travel to attend. That's what we told her, anyway. And after an early evening visit to the wedding venue, Jo is slightly giddy with delight. The Terraces Hotel was built originally in the late 1880's - and is the epitomy of yesteryear charm. With lake views, gorgeous old wooden verandahs and crisp, white table-cloths, it is the perfect setting for a major life event.
That done, we head out for a celebratory dinner at The Bach - a lakefront restaurant which won Cuisine magazine's Best Provincinal Restaurant award this year. It wasn't hard to see why: impeccable service, sensational food. Later, despite what I said earlier about us being too old for nightlife, we end up at Bond, an upmarket lounge bar. Let's just say there is nightlife as well as coffee south of the Bombays.
The next morning some want to walk, some to be pampered. So we head off in two different directions. Kate and I head for Orakei Korako. They call it the 'Hidden Valley' - a geothermal wonderland accessible only by boat. You could cover it in an hour, but we spend at least two, marvelling at some of the largest silica terraces in the world. We arrive back at The Top House to find the bride and the two others purring like cats and muttering something about Dr Hauschka. A facial at the Nadurtha Day Spa is, apparently, all it should be. We pack up, take a final glance out the window across the lake, and head back to our respective cities just as the skies begin to cloud over. Couples have wedding anniversaries. We've decided hens will have them too.