It rained all night and all day, steady and at times very hard. The temperature at noon was 7ºC (45ºF). We had brochures from the camp office showing the many artist studios, galleries, and wineries in the region from Nelson up to Motueka. Marian mapped out a list of places that were open and sounded interesting.
The first visit was to a pottery where Sue Newitt does porcelain with a celadon glaze. The pottery was at the end of a long, narrow gravel lane between orchards, with a couple of flooded spots. But she had some nice stuff and here we actually bought something instead of just looky-looing.
The Hoglund glass factory had a display of really beautiful pieces. They were not running their "hot shop" to demonstrate blowing; it's "winter" season still and not enough traffic. (S'ok, we've watched glass blowing at the Museum of Glass in Tacoma.)
Next up, the World of Wearable Art and Classic Car Gallery in Nelson. World of Wearable Art is an annual show put on out of Nelson—it was going on in Wellington when we were there and we didn't really tune in to what it was about. What it's about is, getting artists and amateurs to produce, well, wearable art. The result is indescribable. Look at some of the samples on the website.
WOW has teamed with a car museum to build a rather snazzy museum next to the airport in Nelson. We had lunch in their cafe and then toured the cars and the WOW gallery. It was a lot of fun. The cars are beautifully restored, over 100 of them, not many really old ones, mostly from the 40s to the 70s. There's a '58 Buick sitting outside the front door.
We went on to visit two galleries of uninteresting art in downtown Nelson, then hit the wineries.
Well, two wineries of the dozens in this area. This is still very much "shoulder season" and we were the only people at either winery, so we had the full attention of the lady behind the counter at each. Which is embarrassing, sipping wine and trying to say something (a) intelligent and (b) not negative about it.
Which was hard because (a) we aren't very intelligent about wine and yet (b) these didn't strike us as particularly good. At the first place in particular, the David thought the sauvignon blanc no better than a box wine, and the oak-aged chardonnay had a wood flavor like what you get when you suck on a popsicle stick. And they had the nerve to bottle what they called a Montepulciano. Dude, we've been to Montepulciano.
Wines at the second place (Neudorf) were noticeably better, although not noticeably better than say, the good ol' Acacia Chardonnay or Beaulieau Cab that we get at the liquor store in Palo Alto (such sophisticated consumers we be). But Marian liked their Chardonnay, so we bought a bottle so she has something to sip while David relaxes with a beer of an evening.
No pictures taken today, not a one!
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