We first arrived in Nelson on the 4th of January. It was a gloriously sunny day and we had less than a 5 minute walk to our hostel. Already, it was ticking boxes.
Our 4 days were spent wandering around the town, visiting the geographical centre of New Zealand, and readjusting to travelling again: after 3 weeks in Gisborne and 12 days in Wellington, we were feeling a little rusty. It was a lazy few days and a perfect way to slip back into the routine of sharing your life with a building full of people. Busy meal times, waiting for showers, and a constant murmur replacing the usual silence of life in a house.
We left one rainy Friday morning, our job applications the only thing we left behind. 2 weeks of driving around the South Island followed but Nelson always sat at the back of our minds. We kept up a constant stream of communication with the manager of the hostel and it was probably that insane level of badgering that secured our jobs for us.
That's how we ended up arriving back in the city, exactly 3 weeks after we left. And that is where we have stayed: Tom until he left to go home, and me until I left on Friday. 2 months of living in the sunniest place in New Zealand. A city full of coffee shops, a border of rolling green hills, and a sky that is never clouded by grey.
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The organised side of me could not have been happier that we climbed to the geographical centre of New Zealand only 3 days after the middle point of my trip. The centre of the country for the centre of the trip? That could not have been planned better.
The views we had of Nelson, and the mountains of the Abel Tasman range, were wonderful. I'm just looking at this picture now and remembering how much fun that afternoon was. We had gone slightly wrong and the 40 minute walk ended up being a full 3 hours by the time we got back to the hostel, and all I wanted to do when we got to the top was sit down and catch my breath.
I want to make a joke about how the view just took it away again but I mean, you just need to look at the picture to see that.
No matter where you are in the city, you can see the hills that border it. It still surprises me, looking to the end of the street the hostel sits on, and seeing a big mound of trees and grass and just green stretching up to the sky.
I think the cathedral was my favourite part of Nelson. Moments of peace have been rare for me over the last 6 months, living almost permanently outside of my comfort zone universe, and that was all I felt while I was inside here: tranquility. The beauty, the silence - I loved all of it.
One thing I'm so gutted about is that I didn't have the money to try all of the different coffee shops here in the city. You'll find them everywhere, tucked into corners, spilling out onto streets, or sitting on a main road like this one, brightening up an otherwise boring walk.
I am not a beach person. The whole idea of "beach days" bores the hell out of me, but even so, I wanted to visit the local beach here because well, I've been here 2 months and it's only 50 minutes down the road.
My first afternoon there was spent led on a towel reading my kindle, and spending time with the two girls I was working with. My second visit was with Tom; it was his last day here in Nelson and he was determined not to leave without a visit.
I may find beaches boring but I could never feel that way about a view like this. Almost half of our 50 minute walk to Tahunanui was alongside this expanse of water. We were looking out at that lonely little rock, a tiny little island topped with trees, and those mountains. That blue range was a constant presence during our walk and it ribbons the whole horizon when you're sat on the sand, it's wonderful.
One afternoon during my last week here, Hannah and I walked to the Japanese Gardens. I've visited a few of these gardens since being here in New Zealand and I enjoyed this one as much as the others. The sun wasn't out but that just meant we didn't overheat during the 90 minute walk, and you could still see the pop of colours and little details that made them such a wonderful place to walk around.
One place I would recommend to people visiting Nelson is definitely Queen's Gardens. When the sun is shining, the garden comes alive with colour and it lends some tranquility to an otherwise busy city (busy for New Zealand at least).
I loved seeing people wandering along the paths, chatting and admiring the flowers. Everything was in bloom when we first visited and I was stopping at almost every step to look at/smell/photograph all of the different flowers that were calling out from the ground.
I remember standing looking out at this and feeling glad we chose this city to live and work in. It was a good choice, for sure.
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