new zealand: the love child of colorado and hawaii. part 1: nelson

so remember one time when i started blogging about our trip to spain and my intent was to break it up into little chunks of the trip so the posts were manageable... and then i only actually wrote one chunk of the trip...

that's why i've decided to post about our trip/wedding/honeymoon (spoiler alert: we got married!) to new zealand in one fowl swoop (foul swoop?...i never knew which way was correct to spell that..) so there it is, i'm commiting myself, in front of the entire internet, to post about a leg of our trip every day until i'm done... makes me a bit nervous

that being said, let's jump right in, shall we?

the airport
we knew the trip was off to an eventful start when the boy lollygagged his way around the house until well past time to get to the airport, resulting in my poor mom getting pulled over for speeding while rushing us to the airport (we still feel REALLY bad about that, mom!) it was amazing we made it on the flight. and lucky for us, because on that very flight, some old guy drooled all over the boy's suitcase (yes, we did have every single article we were taking on a 2.5 week trip on the airplane with us because of the boy's baggage check phobia... and yes, this did include 2 insanely full roller suitcases, two insanely full backpacks, a wedding dress, a ukulele and two pillows. take THAT tsa restrictions!) and some little kid puked all over the seat in front of us. we will hereby forever call that trip "the flight of the body fluids."

nelson
we flew into nelson where we picked up our camper van (soon to be dubbed the "napper van")

and headed over (very timidly given they drive on the left hand side of the road with the steering wheel on the right hand side of the car) to the nelson courthouse to pick up our wedding license and then to wander around downtown nelson, which was very charming.


we found a $2 store (not quite as appealing as a $1 store, but we still went in) where we bought all sorts of good decorations to dress up our camper van.


then, the celebrant for our wedding called us - he lived in nelson and we did, afterall, want to meet each other before he led us into the marriage charge. lucky for us, he was at work in downtown nelson and could take a break to meet with us right then! so, we gathered our $2 goodies and walked in the direction he told us to.... where we ran into this:


remember how we had our marriage interview in the backroom of a sporting goods store? also, remember how our marriage interview consisted of questions like: "what are your full names? what do you think the weather will be like on saturday?" ah, i love the simplicity of new zealand.

after our "interview," we headed to our first bed & breakfast. now the b&b's in new zealand are great because they're actually homestays! meaning, we were literally sleeping in people's old kids' rooms and hanging out with them in their family rooms! it was an amazing way to get to know the culture and really see what the locals are like and what they recommend doing.

anyway, we stayed at A Culinary Experience with kay and joe. it was most excellent. they were actually americans who journeyed over to nz several years ago. she was an awesome chef who cooked ridiculously good breakfasts and a dinner for us and he was a massage therapist. not a bad place to land after 20+ hours in airports!



another couple from london were staying there too (tony and di). they were fabulous! ...the boy kept laughing at me because apparently, when i'm around british people, my word of choice is "fabulous." i can't help it. it's in my blood.


the next day, we strolled around the wine country side of nelson, which was fine, but neither of us are huge wine conisuers, so we got bored before too long..then pulled out our chairs and read by/in the beach (it's really hard to estimate where to sit on the beaches in nz because the water changes by the second and before you know it, you're up to your knees in it!)