Today was a long day for some reason ... We were travelling from Greymouth to Nelson, which isn't really that long, but the weather was being quite ... weathery.

Part way through the trip, we stopped at Pancake Rocks, where there was also a blow hole that wasn't being that impressive because it was low tide.

There was windy stuff, and then there wasn't. It was a bit like the roads near Nelson were telling us that although New Zealand is all hilly and some of the roads feel like they might've been designed when people were quite drunk, when they put their minds to it, and when the landscape cooperates, the roads can be quite nice and flat to drive on.

The other thing about Nelson, we've been told, is that it is apparently the Sunniest Place in New Zealand. Well, it was sunny, and very welcome, after bunches of rain since Thursday evening. Things also closed fairly early - we did arrive lateish Saturday afternoon, but today was also deemed Laundry Day, because the place we were staying (which was really really central to the city) had guest laundry upstairs with washing powder to purchase and tables on the roof... what would any self-respecting RSO:T-er do when faced with such a situation? Do laundry, and play poker while waiting for the washing machine to finish ...

There was the Hotel Cat up on this balcony as well... It owned everything on this balcony, even the hotel guests making use of the laundry services ... It owned Lumpy muchly. It owned Droidy too, but Droidy seems to scare cats off however much she thinks they are cute. Washing, drying, hanging clothes on the line, and lots of poker with a backdrop of a church later, we decided maybe it would be good if we went and got something resembling dinner. The Victoria Rose was just a short walk away, so we traipsed off, following our ears. There was a live band outside playing jazzed versions of With or Without You, Girl from Ipanema, Fly me to the Moon, and Lumpy says that his Burger fell apart, which he says that the Victoria Rose must be punished... Ok ...

Another short walk after dinner netted us some drinkies to take back to our rooms... including this weird twisty shot thing that M34tb4LL purchased ... Poker was the game for the night, and it was deemed that M34tb4LL was required to actually drink this shot as a shot if his pyramid of blue chips was achieved. This happened not too long after the challenge was declared. W00t? Hmmm... medicinal, says the b4LL of M34t ...

Early night because the ferry trip to Wellington from Picton was due to leave at 10:30am, and we needed to have the car (Warthog Mark 1, the Red Army) returned an hour before boat-off.