exploring nelson

fun day in nelson! we unexpectedly both had yesterday off, so we took the bikes out for a spin and explored our new hometown. fortunately, the weather was beautiful (today's rain would have made our outing much less enjoyable) and we didn't have any accidents on the bikes, despite my multiple attempts to create one at the many confusing roundabouts.

(side note: we have yet to master the traffic patterns in new zealand, and so crossing the street without the aid of a traffic light becomes a frogger-like scenario as we try to work out right of way and the direction of traffic. we thought that there would be no need for us to master the left side of the road concept, but we never considered that as pedestrians we would be expected to also walk on the left side of the sidewalk...this one's been rough. when coming upon a person walking in the opposite direction, we generally need a moment to whisper frantically to each other "i'm going left!" in order to avoid the unbearably awkward middle-of-the-sidewalk showdown.)


so we biked down to the bay on the north side of town and followed a new walk/bike path to its end point at the miyazu japanese gardens (right), where the newly floorless tea house was still taped off from a firebombing less than a month ago, a day before the annual friendship celebration with nelson's sister city of miyazu was due to take place. i have a special place in my heart for japanese tea houses, due almost entirely to my fascination with the one in the minneapolis institute of the arts, so this, along with the ponds being nearly dried up, certainly diminished my experience at the garden. it would have been lovely otherwise.

we left the bikes locked up at the garden and walked another block to the start of the "centre of nz" track (left), a 30-minute walk that takes you to a spot that suggests itself as the center of the country, though it's really just an arbitrary starting point for the survey maps. it happens to have a nice viewpoint, too.

returned to the bikes and pedaled into town, stopping to browse a secondhand bookstore on bridge street and eventually finding ourselves (surprise, surprise) at the state theater, where we watched 500 days of summer along with a middle-aged woman who seemed to appreciate the film as much as we did. we'd read an adorable review of the movie in the local paper in havelock by a writer that we seemed to have much in common with, and were not disappointed.

stopped for a late lunch at burger king, which in nz feels more like a nice cafe than a fast food quick stop, popped in the local library, and picked up some groceries at woolworth's before returning to "our loft" to watch masterchef australia (like top chef, but it's on every weeknight and the less experienced chefs get more training). i tried to start on a woody allen biography later in the evening, but the author includes way too many peripheral examples to keep me engaged for very long and it was hard to focus over the noise of the squealing tires in the italian job's car chase sequences anyway.

we're so glad that we took this break in nelson and are having a blast planning out the next part of our journey, as there are plenty of trails in the area that we'd love to hike (pelorus bridge track, abel tasman, heaphy track, wangapeka track, nelson lakes national park...). recommendations are definitely being accepted, so let us know if you think there's a must-see that we should keep in mind!

-rachel