New Zealand - Christchurch

Well Christchurch, what can I say?! I’m not really sure what happened in Christchurch- not really much to be honest. We didn’t dislike it by any means in fact as a city I think we both liked it, the blend of old and new in a similar way to London appeals to us a lot, however as a city to do things in- we really didn’t find much at all. With this said the weather was uncharacteristically bad- funny how the most English place we have come across to date is also reminiscent in terms of weather. Plus maybe we didn’t look as hard as we possibly could have done.

Anyway we arrived late on our first day and the awful weather forced us to hop into a taxi to our hostel, though we had the nicest taxi driver ever, so no real complaints there. Anyway too tired and equally lazy to cook we decided upon something cheap i.e. McDonalds (how very exciting of us), anyway after walking around for a while we decided McDonalds was a bad idea and Mexican food sounded so much more interesting- so we ate out at the Mexican Café. This choice worked out to be a great one as wow was it nice, being massive fans of Mexican food we come to expect a lot from any restaurant that specialises in it and thankfully in this case we were not disappointed. The place also comes with a menu of 40+ different Tequila’s- if that’s your thing, and live Latino guitarists on Thursdays, maybe a fraction noisy for some people mind you.

Anyway day two started in an equally lethargic way- we just didn’t want to rise from our comfortable haven. Anyway when we finally did we hopped on the tram for a 30 minute trip around Christchurch with commentary, greatest features of the tram a)You can use the ticket for 48 hours (ideal for us as the one stop wasn’t far from our accommodation) and b) The auditorium and shopping district the tram passes through are definite highlights.




After our short trip and obligatory coffee stop we headed on with our day, unfortunately the weather restricted our activities, thankfully the cinema came to the rescue and we spent our evening watching ‘The Soloist’.

Our final day in Christchurch and still no great improvement in the weather nor our motivation. However we started our day with a morning excursion to the Saturday arts and crafts market at the Arts Centre, we strolled around for a short time- Jen was determined to get a Maori carving and a Christmas decoration for our future tree; the idea is we have one from each country we visit, unfortunately no luck on either of these. Though fortunately we found a man selling crepes…. we’re on holiday!! Actually eating out was a reoccurring theme on this day. Anyhow after our crepe we headed on to the Christchurch art gallery, now a lot of the gallery was due to open soon so we only saw a fraction of what the gallery has to offer, but it’s free so no complaints on that part. A large amount of the collection was modern art, which without trying to offend I have absolutely no time for. The rest of the works equally bemused me especially those by Séraphine Pick, which I couldn’t relate to in any way or form, many others may be able to understand that on an artistic level, I however shall stick to photography- reassuringly the more artistic part of this duo also wasn’t highly impressed with the works, in her words it was all a bit too fine art and strange … such a way with words. She also complained about the very poor representation of photography and bias towards painting.

Then after the very stressful morning we headed home;



Well maybe not quite home, but the street named after our hometown. We settled down at Coffee House for a mocha and a plate of nachos- who knew nachos from a coffee house could be so good.
The rest of the afternoon was spent wasting time until our dinner reservation at The Bodhi Tree, a Burmese restaurant. Now every part of me wants to love this place; the staff were great, the food was presented well and the restaurant was unique. However, it just wasn’t as good as we expected it be- though in all fairness our expectations were high; the place was booked out every night and the smell when we walked in was fantastic, plus Lonely Planet hypes it up pretty well. The food however…. well it was good but that’s about all I can say, it just wasn’t brilliant, though I’d love to go back and give it another chance.

A very early departure before what is technically our last ‘new’ place- Kaikoura. Though we do have some backtracking to do, back up to Wellington and Auckland and the rental car for our stopover with family in Waikanae, which should hopefully give us the chance to explore a bit more, no need for the tears… yet!