Nelson - New Zealand's Easiest Place to Live...

One of the best things to do in Nelson is the weekly Saturday markets in Montgomery Square. Every Saturday morning the square fills up with stallholders from about 9 or 10am, depending on the weather. They open till 1pm and - unlike many other markets - they do seem to hang around until that time. The closing time for markets tends to be the time when the last stall packs away but this one keeps operating right up till it's time to go. Be warned though that if the weather is really bad (which is very rare indeed in Nelson) then the market may not show up at all, so if you're counting on it then check the weather in advance and cross your fingers that they weather forecast is actually right for a change.

There's a broad array of wares on offer. There's loads of food stalls, all offering different stuff - from chinese kebabs to french crepes and toasted nuts - and it all smells wonderful. It's very hard to choose from all the options on offer, but everything I tried was wonderful so whatever your choice I don't think you can go far wrong.

The stallholders are the same bunch every week and many of them have been coming for years. There's loads of handmade stuff, from jewellery to mustards, from furniture and ornaments to candles and honey. Many of these people are craftspeople and artists, so they're always very happy to discuss their products with you and the level of quality is very high indeed. There are magnificent works of art on display and beautiful woodwork too.

Don't miss the markets if you're around Nelson on a Saturday. It's well worth your time and you may well pick up a serious bargain if you have the time to browse around.

Conveniently located at 204 Hardy Street, about five minutes' walk from Trafalgar Street, Lambrettas is a high quality cafe with a really good atmosphere and a unique, 50s kind of feel to it.

The considerable frontage is easy to spot, with outdoor seating and several Lambretta scooters dotted about the place. The decor is very 50s diner, which isn't something you find very often in New Zealand. The counter staff are chirpy and friendly and really know what they're doing with that coffee machine.

The menu is pretty straightforward and a little pricey, but the food is very good for upmarket NZ cafe fare. Again with the coffees, the usual selection is on offer and it's perhaps a little more expensive than in some other places in Nelson, but not by much, and it is very high quality. For the espresso connoisseur I think this would be a better option than many of the other coffee shops in the area. It's rich and well made and full of flavour.

On the left hand side of Trafalgar Street, right up the top end as you face Trafalgar Park, you find this little gem of a cafe. They do excellent coffee - probably the best coffee I had while I was in New Zealand, which is pretty impressive because that is one thing that the Kiwis do very well. We stopped in there many times for a latte or cappuccino (or indeed their plain coffee, which is also excellent) while we were wandering around Nelson's highways and byways.

The decor is very well done. All very tasteful, well thought out and a great blend of rustic and modern that makes you feel very much at home as soon as you walk in the door. The outside seating is great when the sun is out - as it often is in Nelson - or you can head upstairs to recline in the well-spaced-out sofas dotted around the upper floor.

Where this place really shines though is with its food. Nelson is a little pricey where it comes to food, although it does have some really good cheap options - like the Subway or the MacDonalds (which is just about the cleanest, nicest MacDonalds I've ever seen) - but the good quality eateries, of which there are many, are up in the $30-35 mains region. Caffe L'Affair is slightly lower priced at dinner but offers a very reasonable lunch menu too, which is what we sampled while we were there.

My wife ordered a greek style pizza and I ordered a pasta dish with big chunks of feta cheese a shiny black olives, and they were both excellent. Often when you order lunch you get a bite sized portion or the quality is bad, but these were cooked beautifully, fit to fill a substantial appetite (the sides of steak fries are enormous for only a few dollars if you need something to top you up) and priced at a very reasonable $12-15 per plate. They offer a wonderful range of stonegrilled options too at any time of day, which looked and smelled mouthwateringly good.

So if you want to have a top quality meal without breaking the bank, stop in at Caffe L'Affair for lunch - or alternatively stop in for one of the best coffees in New Zealand. I assure you that will not regret it.

Nelson has a broad range of accommodation on offer, some better than others, and I think that Almond House would fall somewhere in the middle of the pack. It's very easy to spot from the street (Grove Street), with a big mural plastered across the front wall in front of the building. It's a modern strucutre, without a whole lot of character, but it's efficient and pretty orderly at what it does.

The way the hostel is arranged is a little odd. The main building you see when you pull up is actually the home of the couple who own and run the place. The hostel part is round the back in a set of small units - several doubles and a dorm - and it shares the recreational area with the owners' home. It also shares the pool with the owners, which is closed during the winter months.

This all adds up to a community atmosphere. If you look in the guestbook there are many directed to the managers' two young children. People talk about playing cards with them and about the pictures that they drew together, and indeed the kids' toys were strewn all over the hostel - covering much of the pathways. I wasn't too impressed with that, myself, but the managers themselves were very friendly and very helpful.

The kitchen area is small but functional. The internet is rather slow and not too cheap, so if this is a major factor then you're much better off at the Green Monkey round the corner, which offers free, fast internet. The other people at the hostel when we stayed were very pleasant, pretty chilled out. It's certainly not a party hostel.

The rooms themselves were very basic, but pretty clean and comfortable, if a little small. The shower was wonderful though. It's almost worth staying there for the shower alone.

In short, if you like kids and you're not interested in TVs and socialising late into the night then this is a decent hostel for you. It's not cheap, but it's not expensive either. If they have room though, the Green Monkey around the corner outscores these guys on pretty much every level, including price. As an alternative though, you could do a lot worse.

Linen included: Yes
Price: average
Internet: quite expensive and quite slow
Extras: Free tea, coffee, sugar. Pool in summer months

This superb little hostel was up for sale when we stayed there, so I can't guarantee that things will be the same, but when we visited it was the best of the hostels on offer. Not the flashiest, by any means, but for the price we paid it had a great atmosphere, good facilities, friendly and helpful owners and really good hot chocolate to boot!

We stayed in one of their double rooms, for $56 a night, which got us a very clean, very nicely decorated and spacious room with a great bed and our own TV. It was somewhere we kept coming back to, but if you do decide to stay here make sure you book ahead of time, as they only have two double rooms and two dorm rooms, which are often filled with long-termers working in the area.

The living room is very comfortable. Because it's got such a small number of beds, it's rarely crowded and the log burning fire makes it a really pleasant environment to kick back and read a book in. They have no TV, so it's a friendly place, where people actually talk to each other, and the resident guitar makes for entertaining evenings too. On the first night we stayed there, the owners baked us all a chocolate cake for no particular reason and it was delicious. Obviously, this was not something they advertise, so it's done as and when they get the urge, but I got the impression that they often bring over these little extras as an added treat for their guests.

The kitchen was clean and well equipped, with plenty of storage space and never too many people around to cook your food.

The bathrooms similarly were nicely done, with good showers and some slightly racy cartoons decorating the walls to keep you amused while you ... do what you have to do in there.

The best thing about the Green Monkey though was the internet. It's free. They have a machine there where you can log on and check emails and so on or they also have wireless internet which you can use at no extra charge - as long as you don't download any movies or anything, obviously. This is a rare thing in New Zealand, which has poor internet facilities as a rule, and it was a major factor in deciding where we should spend the night. As it turns out, I'm very glad we did.

Linen included: Yes
Price: cheap
Internet: FREE! Wireless and an in-house desktop machine
Extras: Free tea, coffee, sugar, hot chocolate and marshmallows

This is a tricky one to review. It's beautifully decorated, first of all. When you walk in the front door you could easily be walking into a good hotel, with a very professional looking reception area and plush furnishings throughout. Parking is available for $3 a night, there's a broad range of room types available and we stayed in one of their mid-range doubles.

The kitchen is a little small for a hostel this big, but is very clean and very well organised with plenty of eating space and lots of fridge space (and gas cookers, which is always a bonus). It closes at 10pm though, and they don't allow you to take food or drink up into the hostel itself.

This was my main gripe with the place overall - the house rules make you feel a bit like you're in boarding school. No alcohol bought outside the premises to be consumed in the building, no food or drink to be consumed in rooms, no food or drink in the lounge, no cooking after 10pm and 15 minute cutoff light switches that you can't access once you're in the shower rooms and which you can't recharge without switching them off first. The other problem with Accents was the noise. It has the worst sound proofing of any hostel I've ever stayed in. I could hear every word being said in the hall outside our room and the rooms on each side of us, and when the tap was run in the adjoining double it was so loud it woke us up in the middle of the night.

All that aside though, Accents is very professional, very well decorated, very clean and very comfortable. And for what it offers, it's not expensive either. The dorm beds are very reasonable, the shared doubles are too and whilst the double ensuites are expensive, they wouldn't be out of place in a four star hotel. They were flexible on price too, so if you stay a few days and pay cash you may be able to knock them down a few dollars if they're not busy.

It seemed like a good crowd of people staying there but it has a completely different atmosphere to most hostels. It's far more like a traditional hotel in many ways. Just one where they treat you a little like a ten year old at times.

Linen included: Yes
Price: expensive
Internet: $2 for 20 minutes. Wireless available but really bad reception.
Extras: Free tea, coffee, sugar.

I read a lot of reviews of this quiet little hostel, all talking about the wonderful homemade shortbread that will greet you on arrival. Unfortunately, this seems to be a thing of the past as it was nowhere to be seen when we stopped over for the night. The cottage is on Elliot Street, about five to ten minutes walk from Nelson's pleasant and relaxed town centre, but far enough away in a very peaceful little side street that it stays clear of the noise and the paid parking zones. It also has a nice little garden patio which would be a great spot for a BBQ in the warmer months.

The communal areas are really pleasant - quite well equipped with a log burning fire, laundry facilities, nice big TV with dvd player in the lounge, all the stuff you need in the kitchen. Also the staff when we stayed were extremely helpful and friendly, venturing out of their adjoining office/house to socialise and making a point of wishing us well on our travels the next day.

There's no internet access and the rooms are fairly basic, but it's clean, it's extremely cosy and it's priced about where it should be priced. The location is excellent too, but the main plus point for me was the welcoming, relaxed atmosphere. I left the next day feeling like I'd made a good choice.

A good little hostel that knows precisely what it is.

Linen included: Yes
Price: cheap
Dbl/Twin ens: N/A
Internet: N/A
Extras: Free tea, coffee, sugar, lemons.