Stroll to market

We thought we'd take you on a walk with us to the market. Today is Saturday morning . . . well we didn't really get up and out until about 11:30am, but such is life! This is what we see when we leave our house, our little road, Pettit Place. It's about 200 feet to the end of our road, maybe less. Then you turn right and walk another 200 feet and over the bridge.



Right now I am on the bridge taking a picture of our new work-out club, Riverside Pool. It has a pool. And lots of other stuff too. It's about a 3 minute walk from our house. Obviously the trees will have leaves in summer, so you wouldn't otherwise get to see it from the bridge. The other house we looked to rent was just a few feet up the road from Riverside Pool, so it would have been even more convenient. But not by much, we are still very close.


Here are a couple of photos where you are looking back at the bridge, this first one is taken from Riverside Pool and the second one is taken from the opposite way, the road we take toward town.






So on this second photo, we are looking back on the path we take, over the bridge and down. If you were taking this photo, you'd turn around and walk to town.






Now we are at the intersection of Halifax and Collingwood, another 200 feet or so from the bridge. This first photo is what we see when we look right, the bridge over Collingwood. This is how we drive back to our house from town. Looking at this photo it is just a quick drive down to the water/bay that Nelson sits on.




The second one here is what we see when you look left at the same intersection, you see those hills over there. Note that they are not covered in houses, even though the views from them would be spectacular. But this gives you an idea of the boundaries of the city centre, about 5-7 blocks square.




This is the shot you'd see if you looked straight ahead, down Halifax. Toward town. It's a little hard to see in the thumbnail view, but there is another hill ahead a bit, you'll see a few houses on that hill . . . toward the right is water, so these houses do have spectacular views. The roads up to the houses are also very narrow and windy and wouldn't fit our shipping container, so we rented on flat land.


Now we have walked a few blocks down Halifax and turned left. This is Trafalgar and Don and I are crossing the road toward the market. Just across from where Don is is our post office and the Nelson City Council.





Trafalgar is the main street in Nelson city centre that runs north-south (mostly), photo here shows you that at the end of the street is a church spire, famous church I guess. Tough shot, I know, to capture via camera.





We walked aways up Trafalgar, then crossed through a small square to a perpendicular street, Bridge Street. Bridge is the main east-west drag in the city centre. (This is where I get very confused too as to where we are in the city, I am starting to get my bearings, but can't go too many places alone without getting lost still!)



Here is Montgomery Square, the main city square, that is behind 4 city streets and has stores on the inside of the square as well as on the exterior streets. Every Saturday and Sunday during the entire year there are markets here. This is our destination today! The Saturday market is 8-1 and it has fresh fruits and veggies, artisans, and breakfast setups. The Sunday market is the same time and has mostly second-hand items, more a flea market.


More evidence that Don is alive, caught him in another photo! Here we are trolling through the market. Since the market happens every single weekend, we'll pickup our fruits and most veggies here every week rather than at the grocery stores because they are more expensive. Most vendors at the market are selling their own organic produce. It's amazing what actual fruit and vegetables look like when they are not mass-produced or GE'd. Plus the artisans sell their items very reasonably too--I purchased a dozen small hand-made lavender soaps for dirt cheap for our bathrooms and to put in our window sills for a great smell when the winds start up. Plus a few vendors sell splittings from their herb gardens, so in a few weeks we'll pick up some plantings to start our own potted herb garden. We've both wanted to do this for some time, but in Colorado we had such a huge yard to deal with, a small herb garden seemed like an annoyance. Now we can take our time and have one and make good use of the fresh cuttings! I've already found a how-to book at the library!