Day 6 – Nelson – Washing, Streetcar, Downtown and Train Spotting

It was HOT in the room this morning, which meant I was awake and grumbly at 7am… not to mention people kept phoning me which was rather irratating.

After a well needed shower we headed down the laundromat for a well needed washing session! After an hour or so everything is clean and dry and we head down to the supermarket to pick up some lunch. I indulged in a proper toasted sandwich (Turkey and Havarti, mmmm) and a big box of proper chewy choclate cookies 😀 I’m going to be twice the size when I come back, but I don’t care… everything here tastes SO GOOD.

Moving on, we headed back out to catch the 102 year old Streetcar tram that trundles through a bit of the town, which was pretty cool. It even heads straight through the car park of Walmart, with cars flying around infront of it with no care of the fact there was a tram headed right for them. (Also amusingly oblivious: A cyclist trying to catch up with it, and a man with headphones walking down the track) After we’d been in a loop (must’ve been about 15 minutes) we stopped to talk to the nice driver guy… An old guy, the type who loves people to be interested in what they do. He explained what all the different levers and pedals did, and that it had 4x 50 horsepower electric engines.

We paid a quick visit by the visitor center to get some local information (and bear bells!) and had a walk around the town, visiting some shops on the way. Today I’m wearing my Spiderpig t-shirt and no less than 3 people either commented or had a conversation with me about how cool it was… Everyone is so amazingly friendly, it’s so fantastic. I purchased a rather cool keyring sized leatherman which doesn’t comprimise on functionality, mainly because it’s very useful and small and the cost; the leatherman stuff has the same money value in the UK or US/Canada… So $30 would’ve been £30 in the UK, so it was a bargin really.

On the way back we stopped to get some tea, after deciding to eat in for once; two HUGE pizzas (like, the size of a car tyre for $10 each), my favourite San Pellegrino Limonata lemonade (90p a can from Benugo at home; £2.50 for 6 here) and some Ben & Jerry’s Chunky Monkey ice cream later, my mouth is watering already… I’m writing pre-dinner today!

Some pretty impressive freight trains come through here, one a day. You can hear the horns from our motel; the track passes by about 1km away. Today when Aidan and I heard it we thought, why not, and jumped in the car to go down to the track (which you stand right next to, no barriers or any of that wussy crap!) and take some pictures. It was pretty damn impressive, huge trains (and very long, although this one was only probably 20-30 wagons long) very loud horns and very bright lights.

Tired again, as usual, and time for food, cans of Smirnoff Ice, and sleep.