Another appetizer blog for Christmas day as the credit is running out again...

Spent two days in Nelson in the Grand Mercure Monaco Apartments.... four stars.... very swanky. We had a nice little apartment with a seperate bedroom and kitchen/dining room. It was lovely, and even lovelier compared to what we had become accustomed to (and as I write this have become reacquainted with rather abruptly, oh well thats the backpacker life). We went and did some shopping to get the christmas day food ready, there was only two restaurants open in the town.. one was booked up and the other was a rip off.... so we cooked our own (go team). Npt sure if we did much else that evening, we might have just relaxed since it was Christmas eve apparently!!!!!

Christmas day started early, the same little girl from the boat in Kaikoura was up very early scratching around the hotel looking for Santas presents.... sorry honey, no chimney, no Santa!!! We had received care packages already... tea and chocolate (never thought I would appreciate them so much, thanks lots and lots). We had some yummy pancakes and started preparing our christmas day lunch (ham sandwiches in a sandwich bag!!!!). We decided we would spend the day in the Abel Tasman national park, good idea, it was lovely. Very forrested but with beatiful golden beaches and turquoise water to the side

Gotta go now, christmas day was lovely.....

Back again, sorry for the delay... So christmas was nice anyway, we had a lovely little dinner and dessert in the hotel, we cooked it ourselves... the dessert was cookies and yoghurt... yum!!!!!?????? I got to go for a nice christmas day run while Reg had a nice Christmas day shower and we settled down with some Barrys tea (gold label of course, imported naturally), and watched the Christmas day movie on the tv.... ahhhhhh

That was it really for Nelson, we left on Stepheneseses day for the West coast and as we were leaving the weather was starting to turn sour anyway. We even heard on the radio a few days later that the Nelson had been flooded, I dont think we could have coped with that after November 2009 (wow it was that long ago wasnt it!!!!!). As we drove on we were getting kind of battered ourselves with the weather. We were heading to Greymouth for a few days (which I will skip as nothing exciting happened there anyway). On the radio there were weather warnings for the West coast, 100 mph winds in Wellington, a cyclone in Queenstown, earthquakes in Christchurch, the before mentioned flooding in Nelson, and to top it off 33 degrees celcius sunshine in Kaikoura on the other side of the island..... Ireland cant even produce gold like that!!!!!

Greymouth was, well grey.... thats really and honestly the long and short of it. The weather was crappy, and there wasnt much to do. We more or less chilled out for the two days we were there, and the only highlight was a car show which is going down the coast had stopped over for the night so we got loads of pictures of some cool hotrods and muscle cars.... my Greymouth album in its entirity is of cars. Next stop after that, and the next blog is from Glacier country. The road down was again stormy so I have no idea what the scenary was like, amazing no doubt.... thats where the next blog begins anyway... read on