Recce trip booked

We have finally booked our flights for our recce trip. Mother in law has very kindly agreed to look after the children so we can have a good look around and start job hunting. Have booked to fly over to Christchurch middle of February and do a bit of a tour of the South Island. We are liking the look of the Nelson area so are planning to spend some time there and some time in Otago (hubbie has friends there) and Christchurch etc. (only have 2.5 weeks though) Very excited although feel slightly sad we are leaving the children behind, although do think it will be easier to have a good look around and at least I wont have the school on my back for removing them in term time, haha.
:):)
If anyone has any tips for us It would be very much appreciated. :)

Nelson's a great place if you can get jobs. Everything about it looks good to me.

The people, the scenery, the schools, the climate all A1.

Good luck with the recce.

Nelson's lovely, mind you I only spent a week there. How small of a town can you handle? I guess that would be a question to ask. Most places here are of course much smaller than in the UK. My home town has 90K people and the town I lived in after that, 180K. Wellington has about 400K (very -ish!) and I find that great, too... mind you, I don't step foot in the vast majority of areas as I don't have a need to, but a higher population does of course mean more amenities.

Thanks for your replies. Very excited for our trip. From what we have researched Nelson does look amazing. Will be nice to see it though in person rather than photos over the Internet.
Counting down the weeks now. :-)

Our experience.

It can be very easy to just see the good side of things when going somewhere new. Try hard to spot the things that will niggle you and whether you can live with them. They are different for all of us and they will depend on your own values.

It may be something really small - but beware of small things - or something that is a huge issue to you. New Zealand has a different culture and those of us from the UK have to take care that we don't presume it is just the UK on the other side of the world.

I think we maybe felt that to a certain extent during our previous holidays, until we started to look seriously at a life out there during our visits last year. We have a trip planned next July where it really will be a final - 'can we live here trip'. (I'm sure the answer will be yes :biggrin:)

Above all enjoy yourselves - the kids will be fine - they will be more than fine staying with mum-in-law, they will get spoilt rotten.