Discovering Nelson City

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The plan was to have a cruisy day and discover Nelson at a slow pace.

We have been here before but most recently was still longer ago than we can remember and our stay was very brief as we hadn’t booked any accommodation before we arrived and the city was seemingly booked out forcing us to sleep in our car at the Tahunanui Motor Camp.

So on that occasion we slept very little, woke up at sun up, very cold even though it was in the summer and drove south in search of somewhere for breakfast which we didn’t find for quite some time as it was so early in the morning.

So we started out our exploration of the city with a visit to Tahunanui Beach which is rated one of the best in NZ.It doesn’t have the curve of our Mount Maunganui Beach nor the imposing Mount behind it but the sand was a similar light grey in colour and the beach was very flat and the water looked safe for swimming with virtually no waves.

It was great to see parents out with their children enjoying both the beach and the park with skateboard bowl, swings etc and it restored our faith that not all kids want to sit with their tablets and phones rather than be out in the fresh air.

We carried on into the city past the harbour and admired the solid concrete buildings of yesteryear when shipping companies who no longer exist had their own bases at the port. A disappointing feature was the number of large tanks scattered around rather grouped together but we suppose the port has just grown over time and the planning didn’t allow for a bit more uniformity.

As we left the port area we came across the main street through where the main shopping seemed to be.

Compared to our rather deserted and dreary main shopping street in Tauranga,Trafalgar Street, Nelson was a real eye-opener with all the main chain stores represented on either the main street or one of the cross streets. Added to this there seemed to be a good sized car park for long term parking every 2 or 3 cross streets of the main street making it a short walk to get to the action.

We guess the major difference to our home town is that Nelson doesn’t have 3 or 4 large shopping malls out in the suburbs as Tauranga has and the ease of getting parking downtown in Nelson doesn’t discourage people for looking elsewhere to do their shopping.

Taking a wander up Trafalgar Street we enjoyed the ambience of the shady trees at the intersections and doing window shopping as we made our way to the steps of the Nelson Cathedral on a small hill at the end of Trafalgar Street.

From the outside it is not the most attractive of cathedrals even for New Zealand, at least from the Trafalgar Street end with its rather dour grey belltower.The main entry which was at the other end of the building that we had approached from was a more appealing view.

We took a wander inside the building looking especially for the two chairs that supposedly had not been sat in since the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh visited the cathedral during their 1954 visit to New Zealand. At first it appeared like they might have been removed from an obvious place but then as we tracked down the other side of the interior we found the two chairs roped off with their story for all to read.

Nelson has probably been the first location we have been to over the week where, had our borders not still been closed we might have come across overseas tourists as we took in the sights. And although we did encounter a group of adults and children who spoke in a foreign language on the steps leading to the Cathedral we felt that they looked like they had been living in New Zealand for a while.

It will be interesting to see if this changes in any way as we get to places like Queenstown and Lake Tekapo during the Grand Tour as we daresay there are probably still some backpackers from foreign countries stuck here, unable to get home.

Lunchtime was upon us and with the pleasant, mild weather continuing we found a café with an outdoor seating area to quaff back a glass of Rose grown and bottled locally along with our choices of the lunch menu, as we people watched.

By the time lunch was over we were ready to head for Chris and Marilyn’s home in Richmond and join them for an early Fish and Chip dinner before heading back to the Air BnB and an early night to be ready to celebrate Gretchen’s birthday tomorrow while we head further south to Hokitika.

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