The experience at Waitangi was world class - the Te Kongahu Museum of Waitangi exhibition downstairs takes you through Ko Waitangi Tenei (This is Waitangi) - a historical tour of Northland history, in particular the Treaty of Waitangi history.
Sadly though, our group wandered out of the downstairs museum into the nearby boardwalk and missed going upstairs to the Waitangi Wahine art exhibition.
We took in the treaty grounds, the Treaty House, Te Whare Runanga (the carved meeting house) and marvelled at the waka. Our trip to Waitangi also included driving up past the multimillion-dollar views from the Waitangi Golf Course to the new mountain bike park.
We had stayed the night in Paihia, a town that in the past five years or so seems to have woken up to the fact it could easily be the Queenstown of the north.
The development has thrown up a few quirks though - who on earth allowed three icecream shops within a 50m radius to open up? One of them will surely die in winter, if not before. Madness.
And the tourist dollar has pushed up inflation a little, which is to be expected in a tourist town.
Getting a ferry to Russell was ridiculously easy, as was getting a table on the waterfront at the Duke of Marlborough to celebrate a milestone birthday within our family.
And after confusing the heck out of a French waitress who asked how us to spell L&P, and what was it?, we headed back to Paihia, catching a ferry with little delay.
For 24 hours we were in a world class tourism pocket, in little old Northland, and it's only going to get better.
There are many pockets in Northland of course, and not all of them are wealthy or world class.
Overnight, I sincerely hope that Vanessa Wihongi did not spend the night in her car.
Vanessa's house burned down a month ago, the cause was a discarded cigarette. Except no one in her house smokes.
Fresh out of hospital after a major operation, when the Northern Advocate spoke to Vanessa yesterday she was looking at spending last night and Christmas Eve in her car.
There are many fine people championing this region and all it offers, often under taglines of Love It Here or similar.
Often we are focused on hyping Northland so that other people come here to spend their money.
The truth is we do Love It Here but it doesn't do us any harm now and then to pause for a moment and consider the plight of thousands of Northlanders living close to the breadline who may not love it here.
Unlike tourists, they don't have money to spend.
Hopefully the same level of money and time being invested in tourism is also being invested in the social issues in our region.
Now that would be great Christmas wish to come true.
