Our south island part of the trip ended at the northern cities of Nelson and Blenheim. Both cities had attractive city parks. Since it was springtime, flowers were blooming, unlike the late fall weather back home.
Picton is the dock on the south island for the ferry crossing of the Cook Strait to the north island. Blenheim is a 20 minute drive to Picton which made a good location for our overnights. The fact that Blenheim is in the middle of the famous Marlborough wine region was another good reason to stop there! It was on a local wine tour that we ran into the couple we had shared dinner with two weeks prior on the Uluru Sounds of Silence dinner!
The ferry ride was very scenic working our way out through the Marlborough Sounds. Once in open water we were fortunate that we had relatively calm seas, which we understand isn’t always the case.
