Our last day in New Zealand for a while and it’s been great! As much as I love Queenstown, I love Christchurch for different reasons especially when you arrive here after a month of relaxation and the stillness of the mountains! Christchurch is smaller, busier and has great shops! We o benighted in Oamaru on the drive up here, which is the steampunk centre of the universe! It’s a quirky odd little town full of fabulous Victorian buildings from a prosperous era and a thriving steampunk culture of penny farthings, old machinery and rusty trains! We stayed in the Poshtel which was as wacky as the town and housed in one of the old buildings renovated beautifully - high ceilings, sash windows and the slowest lift in Christendom! We are at Fat Sallys who’d run out of seafood and salad stuff - the supplier only comes on Tuesdays! It was such an entertaining stop over - it’s also home to a colony of small blue penguins and has a beach full of surreal oddly shaped boulders.
We drove on Christchurch - quite a boring journey over the Canterbury Plains and headed out for dinner to a pub we’d spotted on our way in. We were lucky as a group were playing traditional Irish music - they were very good and our feet were soon tapping away. The following morning we headed out to Catheral Junction where the trams head out from and hopped on one to the Botanical Gardens - the roses were in full bloom and just magnificent. We had a lovely stroll around then hopped back on the tram to check out the shops. Ballentines is a traditional and well loved department store here and it was lively in the run up to Christmas - they are very proud of their window displays and even have barriers erected to control the crowds that gather around to admire them. Probably the most Christmassy we’ve seen this season but nothing compared to Oxford and Regents street or even the local windows in Littlehampton!
Yesterday we drove out to Akaroa - cloudy but pleasantly warm - it’s a simple and lovely little town on the coast with some quaint boutiques - I bought not one but two hats! I know …I know but I couldn’t rest them! We got home, had a quick change and then headed o out on the tram again - this time the restaurant tram and we fine dined around the streets of Christchurch - round and round ! The food was great and served beautifully - I just wished we hadn’t passed the queue of homeless being fed by the Christchurch Mission - it sort of made me feel guilty! I came back to our room and donated as I couldn’t get them out of my mind.
Today was a lovely day - we had one last visit to the shops and then to - what has now become our local pub - for a snack and I left Nick there to watch the cricket while I went to the Banksy Exhibition which had just opened and was on next door at the Exhibition centre! I loved it - it’s just been on in London and I missed it so was grateful to catch it here!
We dined at the Monday Room this evening and WOW - loved it - everything about it! Old original building that had survived the earthquake, great ambiance, seriously delicious food and a great wine list! So so glad we have discovered this gem!
So goodbye Christchurch - it’s been perfect! I hope we’ll be back.
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