Nelson

On the way into town we were greeted by a gang of kite surfers zipping around the bay –a sweet sight indeed.

After a few hours of windy roads and sunny skies, we headed directly to “Free House” in Nelson. A converted church has been thoroughly upgraded to… you guessed it –a brewpub! Yesssss! This is our favorite Church… ever! They had a variety of tasty brews –we decided on a perfect wheat beer and slurped them down directly (we were so thirsty from the long drive and needed some quenching).

Free House

Following that little respite, we headed off to do some window shopping at the surf shops and little hippy joints (bead store, anyone?) around town. Well, guess what we found? A little brewery… with a pub… who would have guessed? This place is called “Sprig and Fern” and wasn’t uncovered in any of the extensive research we had done on beer in this country. We tasted everything and they had great beers (All of which are brewed at their own private brewery close by). Joh had the fern dark (toasty, caramelly, tasty) and CBird had the strikingly deep purple three berry cider (apple, blackberry, strawbeery and boysenberry juices –all local). We smoked some tasty Cuban cigars (who knew?) and chilled out for a while. We met an agreesive local kiwi couple that were less than positive towards tourists, but that’s another story for another day.

Sprig & Fern

After a great Nelson beer recon adventure (there are two other breweries there that we had to skip –one named ‘Wizard Monkey”), we proceeded to the hotel to make dinner...