Nelson: The Birthday Weekend

We arrived in Nelson at the Palace Backpackers two days before Daniel's birthday on January 17th and it became a true Birthday Weekend as we celebrated for three excellent days. The excuse for the absurd amount of food, juice (me), and alcohol (boys) consumed was that "Heeeey it's your birthday!"

We slept in the morning of the 16th and Tim and I ran birthday errands before we headed out to the beach for lunch and a great afternoon. We purchased a Boogie Board and a Skim Board (which is a heavier wooden board that skims along the waters surface as the waves roll in and out on the beach) to use and I definitely wiped out wicked hard on the Skim Board. I hit the sand so hard I was bleeding. We enjoyed the warm waters, beautiful mountains and weather, and a great time playing volleyball. We were joined by our new French friend Cindy who was great to add to our dynamic.

After our beach day we spent time in the hostel's hot tub and decided to stay another day for Dan's birthday! We cooked a HUGE meal with Cindy: pasta, red sauce, cheese, soy sauce veggies, garlic bread, and a big salad. We stayed up late chatting and playing cards which we became addicted to.

We woke up very late on the 17th and I made Dan breakfast for his birthday as he checked his facebook for well wishes. We left mid-afternoon to go to Richmond (the next town over) to visit the cutest cooking store: Baku! The women working there, Lyn and Linda, made us tea and chatted with us for over an hour. We bought presents and we headed back to Nelson to finally have a picnic lunch at 5:30pm. We also had fun playing on this tire swing claw contraption - wait for photos on that. It was hilarious.

We picked up some other people from the hostel to come play a game of volleyball with us: we were joined by Will from Britain, Danielle from Jersey (a British Isle), and Charles from Sweden. The game was awesome -- Danielle, Charles, Tim, and I triumphed 2 games to 1 over Mike, Will, and Dan. We played on the most amazing playground post-game: there were zip lines and spinning swings and tire claws!

We had a repeat of our meal the night before and shared cake and ice cream with our new friends as we played card games and finally fell asleep exhausted.

When we woke in the morning it was raining and we decided once again to stay at the Palace and avoid camping in the rain. We had a lazy internet, laundry, napping, errand day and had a fantastic dinner of stir fry and rice. We played card games with Charles, Will, Danielle, Cindy, and a few others that wandered in and wanted to join in our silent game of Spoons. It was a fantastic night and a great ending to the Birthday Weekend.