Our first week in Nelson has been busy, revisiting a lot of our old haunts, and a few new ones, as we are staying in the southern part of the city, whereas on previous visits we have stayed in the East and North sides of the city.
In the photo below, the street running down the centre, from the ocean to the base of the hill, is Rutherford Street. If you look to the right of the green field on the left edge of the photo, you will see a house with its garage right next to Rutherford Street. We are staying in the lower right hand portion of that house. So we are about 5 blocks from the centre of town and right at the base of the hills, giving us the choice of walks on the flat in the city, or hill walks in the country.
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| Rutherford Street from The Grampians |
The South end of Nelson has a lot of beautiful old houses and cottages, many of which have been lovingly restored. The photograph below is of Melrose House, which was built circa 1879, and is just a block away from us.
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| Melrose House, Nelson |
Our only transportation this week has been our feet, so we have done a lot of walking, with one walk up the Maitai River, two up onto the hills above Nelson, and one along the ocean. We are here a little later in the year than our previous visits to Nelson, so no sign of mushrooms or plums on the river walk, but we continue to keep our eyes open. We did spy a lot of peaches on a tree which hung over a fence into a nearby church property, and as there were a lot of peaches on the ground, we assumed that the peaches were not wanted. So we prevented a few from falling onto the ground and bruising. When we cut into them we found that they had black flesh, and thanks to Google, we learned that they are called Indian or Black Boy peaches....delicious!
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| Maitai River Walk |
I included the photo below, not to show how high we had climbed (about 500 feet), but because of the UFO that appeared unexpectedly in the upper left of the photo. If you enlarge the photo you will see that it is a Cicada (tree cricket). Cicadas are very prevalent in the local woods, and their cumulative song is very loud, so it takes a while to get used to the constant noise in an otherwise quiet environment.
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| City of Nelson (and Cicada) From The Grampians |
One of the most peaceful places in Nelson is the Japanese Garden, which is along the ocean to the East of the city. It is a good place to sit and reflect, or simply as a walking destination.
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| Japanese Garden, Nelson |
But it hasn't been all walks in the woods. We went to see a play by the local theatre group - "One Man, Two Guvnors", which we watched from the front row, and which was hilarious (thankfully we were not chosen for audience participation). We enjoyed it so much that we booked tickets for "Fiddler on the Roof", for our last night in Nelson in April.
We also went to the movies, to see "The Lion", which everybody told us we had to see, not least because a lot of it was filmed in Tasmania. We thoroughly enjoyed it also, but found that it dragged a bit in places.
On the food front, we did visit "our local" on the East side of town, the Sprig and Fern. This pub has a symbiotic relationship with the takeout restaurant next door, so you can order food at the restaurant and they deliver it to you table at the pub (all at takeout prices). So we enjoyed a pint on the patio, mingling with the locals, and a meal.
I spotted the sign below outside another pub in town. The sign caught my eye, but you really do have to read to the bottom.
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| Read The Whole Sign |
Hopefully next week we will get out biking, and explore a little further afield.
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