Sunday 11 October 2015
Saturday 10 October 2015
Friday 9 October 2015
Christchurch
This morning our aim was to make it to Christchurch. This will be our final destination in New Zealand therefore we planned to return the car. This meant I had to ring up the company to let them know we were returning it today. They were absolutely fine about it and so we set off, driving a couple of hours into Christchurch. Instead of heading straight into the centre we stopped at a suburb called Riccarton where we knew there was a Saturday market. After parking at a nearby shopping mall, we walked to the farmers market and were pleasantly surprised with how big it was and how popular it was. There were loads of people and the stalls were selling local produce. We shared a pork and apple sausage roll as well as a cranberry, almond and white chocolate scone. Both of them were delicious.
After looking round the market we headed back to the shopping mall where we'd parked the car and went inside because Matt needed a new shaver (his old one had just completely packed in). We found a really good shaver shop with excellent discounts so all was good. We also got some food from a supermarket for tea and then hopped back in the car so we could find a hostel. This proved tricky because the first hostel we tried was closed for renovation. The second hostel was fully booked and so we ended up at a third that luckily was cheaper and still rather nice. We had lunch after we'd checked in (sandwiches again) and then had to say goodbye to the car. We drove five minutes to the car hire place to give it back and all was fine. Because we'd given the car back early we got money back! I've been extremely impressed with Omega car rentals and would highly recommend them to anyone travelling round New Zealand.
From the car hire place we walked into town, starting to see how heavily the earthquake from a few years ago has hit this city. Every other building is being rebuilt and it will take many more years until Christchurch looks like a normal city again. We headed to what's called the Restart mall which is many shops created out of shipping containers. It's very cool and modern. Matt needed to buy some gifts for his family so this was the perfect place. We spent a couple of hours here before walking to cathedral square to witness the half destroyed cathedral. That was sad to see and sort of had an eery feel about it.
We were pretty tired after this for some unknown reason so headed back to the hostel and made some tea. We wanted to use up all the food we still had so we ate pasta with sauce and pieces of chicken. It turned out better than I thought it would. There was a telly in the kitchen as well which was showing Pirates of the Caribbean so we stayed to watch that for a while until eventually we went to bed.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)