The ordeal of returning the car and making it onto the ferry wasn’t an ordeal at all, it took about 10 minutes to find our car rental place and the guy drove us over there with plenty of time to spare. The ferry ride was cool, a 3 hour trip in all, the ferry was large and had a café, a pub, a
movie theater, and other areas aboard and it was about 10% full, so there was plenty of room to walk around and hang out in all the areas. We went up to the top deck which is outside on the top of the boat for the arrival to the South Island, we actually wove our way though some channels before docking in Picton at 11:30, 3 hours to the minute after leaving Wellington. These people are better than Germans in public transportation punctuality. All the employees on the boat were dressed in costume for Halloween, I wasn’t sure if they observed that here, guess they do.
We didn’t spend any time in Picton, just got the car and headed out to Marlborough which was about a 30 min drive. Marlborough is the largest wine region in New Zealand, so we had our eyes set on tasting a handful of wines. The down side to it was that this region is known for it’s white wines, and we are more red people, but Marlo did some homework and figured out which ones had some reds in their inventory. We hit about 4 small wineries before heading another hour or so to Nelson, which is along the north coast of the south island. The drive to Nelson was very windy up through the hills, I wouldn’t want to do that drive after tasting too many wines.
We got into Nelson and just walked around a bit, Marlo had done some research and found a cool old pub that actually has rooms to stay in up stairs too, so we figured we’d try that place for tonight. All we really did in Nelson was go to the information center to ask about what good hikes were in the area. We made out way out of town about 10 minutes to that pub to find it was pretty expensive, which left us with 2 options. Option 1, go back into Nelson and find a place for tonight, or option 2, drive a bit out of town and hope we can find our friends the Kimrey’s who are vacationing here as well and are staying just outside of town. We took option 2 even though
our directions weren’t very good, we figured if we couldn’t find them then we’d just go back and find a bed n breakfast. We ultimately did find them, they were way outside of town, and way far away from everything. Jason works at Intel too and is on his sabbatical as well, but they are taking the entire 11 weeks to stay in New Zealand, a week or two in each location, renting homes for that time instead of the B&B whirlwind Marlo and I are doing (we’ve only got 3 weeks!).
The place was really nice and it had an extra bedroom, so we were able to just stay with them, which was nice. I went with Jason down to the creek for about 45 minutes to try some fly fishing (caught nothing) then we met the girls in town for a very nice dinner. Afterwards we came back to their house which had a fire pit outside, we started up a fire and drank wine by it until we went to bed around midnight.
movie theater, and other areas aboard and it was about 10% full, so there was plenty of room to walk around and hang out in all the areas. We went up to the top deck which is outside on the top of the boat for the arrival to the South Island, we actually wove our way though some channels before docking in Picton at 11:30, 3 hours to the minute after leaving Wellington. These people are better than Germans in public transportation punctuality. All the employees on the boat were dressed in costume for Halloween, I wasn’t sure if they observed that here, guess they do.We didn’t spend any time in Picton, just got the car and headed out to Marlborough which was about a 30 min drive. Marlborough is the largest wine region in New Zealand, so we had our eyes set on tasting a handful of wines. The down side to it was that this region is known for it’s white wines, and we are more red people, but Marlo did some homework and figured out which ones had some reds in their inventory. We hit about 4 small wineries before heading another hour or so to Nelson, which is along the north coast of the south island. The drive to Nelson was very windy up through the hills, I wouldn’t want to do that drive after tasting too many wines.
We got into Nelson and just walked around a bit, Marlo had done some research and found a cool old pub that actually has rooms to stay in up stairs too, so we figured we’d try that place for tonight. All we really did in Nelson was go to the information center to ask about what good hikes were in the area. We made out way out of town about 10 minutes to that pub to find it was pretty expensive, which left us with 2 options. Option 1, go back into Nelson and find a place for tonight, or option 2, drive a bit out of town and hope we can find our friends the Kimrey’s who are vacationing here as well and are staying just outside of town. We took option 2 even though
our directions weren’t very good, we figured if we couldn’t find them then we’d just go back and find a bed n breakfast. We ultimately did find them, they were way outside of town, and way far away from everything. Jason works at Intel too and is on his sabbatical as well, but they are taking the entire 11 weeks to stay in New Zealand, a week or two in each location, renting homes for that time instead of the B&B whirlwind Marlo and I are doing (we’ve only got 3 weeks!).The place was really nice and it had an extra bedroom, so we were able to just stay with them, which was nice. I went with Jason down to the creek for about 45 minutes to try some fly fishing (caught nothing) then we met the girls in town for a very nice dinner. Afterwards we came back to their house which had a fire pit outside, we started up a fire and drank wine by it until we went to bed around midnight.
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