I have a confession that the retailers of this city won't like.
At the end of November when Christmas was looming and I wasn't sure how on earth I was going to get ready in time, I made a pact with myself.
I vowed to do all my Christmas shopping online.
So clever, I thought. There would be no queues for me, no mad rushes to get to Bayfair before it closes after work and no trying to find a park.
The parcels, which I would order when I had a spare five minutes, would be waiting at my doorstep when I got home the next day, perfectly wrapped and ready to go under the tree.
My friends would marvel at the gifts that they had never seen in stores before and I'd be the Queen of Christmas Giving, with none of the stress that would usually come with such a title.
How wrong I was. The first item arrived - a glass vase that was meant to look like an open pick n' mix lolly bag.
Bought from a funky store in Wellington, this was meant to be a winner of a gift for my best friend.
Except when I took it out of the box I could have cried, it looked nothing like a lolly bag, just a weird misshapen vase. As the kids would say - epic fail.
Convinced that it had just been an unlucky experience I clicked onto Lush's website to order Christmas bath bombs for some girls in the family.
Ha, I'll save petrol by not having to drive to Bayfair this way, I thought. Until I saw the shipping costs.
Still not put off the concept I decided to buy a Christmas Day dress from the website of a Kiwi designer.
The picture I selected on screen was gorgeous.
The dress that arrived the next day was the dress I had ordered but looked a lot different and required far more sucking in than I was prepared to do. With no refunds allowed, I paid to send it back in a courier bag and traded it in for a necklace that I had no intention of buying.
I gave up on my pledge to only buy online with two weeks to go until Christmas and thank goodness I did.
I had so many great retail experiences in Tauranga and the Mount over those two weeks and what's more I love everything I bought during them.
The highlights would have to be ordering my ham from Good Food Trading Company (where they took the time to tell me the ins and outs of how to prepare it), buying a holiday for the boyfriend from Air New Zealand (where Claire is always a dream to deal with) and making a last-minute 5pm Boxing Day dash to Flax Gallery and Gifts in Bureta (where I wish I had just started my Christmas shopping in the first place).
Me and online shopping are over.