Nelson - time to reflect

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Our accommodation for three nights in Nelson City was at the very cute and very functional Shortbread Cottage backpackers. The owner Jimmy, kindly left us to it and we had the whole place to ourselves. The Curach family of four had now joined us so we spent the evening catching up with them and settling in. What a great place! Perfect for our needs. Five bedrooms, three bathrooms, laundry and a fully equipped kitchen all set in a historic house.

We spent our days in Nelson soaking up the atmosphere, reminiscing about the good ole days (makes us feel old!), visiting old friends and checking out the old haunts. Steve was quite nostalgic and I think we'll be back again in the near future to spend more time here.

On one of the days we went and checked out Cable Bay where the first telegraph cable reached NZ from Australia in 1876. Unfortunately the wind was squalling again and although it was a beautiful bay, the cold wind made it less than ideal. Pretty amazing what they accomplished way back then tho'.

We also checked out the WOW musuem for the first time - very, very impressive. I'm always in awe of such creativity! And the car museum got the thumbs up from the petrol heads too. Steve's old friend from school, Mike MacMillan had some of his work on display in the foyer of the WOW. Hopefully we will get time to catch up with him whilst we're down here.

The kids (big ones included) all had a great time at the Tahuna Beach area - giving the bumper boats a whirl and trying their hand at go-kart racing. We could have spent all day here if the wallets were bottomless.

As we were in civilisation for the first and last time during our trip, we adults decided to feed the kids Burger King, put them in front of the tv and go out for a well earned meal - well twice actually. The first night we were lucky to get a table for eight at the popular Poppy Thai restaurant (excellent!) and the second at the Turkish place next door to it (also excellent). Great fun and hilarity organizing my 50th in 2017 = a double decker bus around Italy, Croatia, Holland, Greece, Turkey and Egypt complete with accompanying film crew making a documentary about our travels. We'll see.....

Next stop Marahau....

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