Christchurch

30th & 31st December 2009 Yesterday we spent the day travelling, first from our lovely spot at Halfmoon Cottage back to Christchurch where we enjoyed our final Kiwi meal of fish and chips (what else!), then onto the airport to catch the plane to Sydney. We arrived at the Hilton on George Street in Sydney, arguably the best hotel we’ve stayed in so far with its modern room, comfy bed and great view over George Street. After checking in, the priority was to do a bit of a recce in preparation for the New Years Eve fireworks tomorrow so we wandered down to Circular Quay and around the Opera House where preparations for private parties and public areas were in full swing. ...

23rd December 2009 On to the very last leg of our New Zealand adventure today, a week-long stay at a small place about an hour and a half from Christchurch called Akaroa. This is where we’ll be enjoying the festive period doing not much apart from reading, a bit of walking and generally relaxing before the madness of Sydney over New Year. We stopped off to do our ‘Christmas shop’ in Christchurch, which although busier than normal was in no way as bad as the insanity of Tescos a few days before Christmas. ...

22nd December 2009 Tonight we’ve been invited to Sarah and Hayden’s house in Christchurch for a BBQ and to stay the night. Since we’ve got to do a big shop for over Christmas and had run out of stuff for breakfast yesterday, this morning we treated ourselves to a full cooked breakfast at the Powerhouse Cafe - bloody gorgeous. To walk off the aforementioned gluttony we headed up to Conical Hill, where a gently sloping path winds back and forth up the hill to a viewpoint at the top. The views from here were amazing, you really see how flat the plains are surrounded by mountains on all sides with the little town of Hamner nestled directly in front of you. ...

13th December 2009 One of my second cousins lives in Christchurch, so today we had arranged to meet up with her and her boyfriend Hayden for a spot of lunch. We were experiencing another dry day, so after they picked us up, we headed out towards Banks’ Peninsula. There we stopped at a place called Sign of the Kiwi at Port Hills, from here we had a stunning views across Christchurch to the Southern Alps in the distance. We took a short path around the hillside and enjoyed the views over Lyttleton Harbour in the other direction. ...

12th December Happy Birthday Dad! We’ve spent quite a bit of time driving around Christchurch between picking up the campervan over two weeks ago, then arriving back Thursday night and dropping the van back on Friday, but we haven’t really had the opportunity to explore the city itself. Our hostel is just a short walk from Hagley Park and the Botanic Gardens, so this seemed like the ideal place to start our wanderings. It was a beautiful day with clear blue skies and we thoroughly enjoyed strolling through the gardens which in parts seemed more like a large park with wide open areas as well as the formal gardens such as the rose garden. ...

10th & 11th December 2009 The campervan is due back in Christchurch on Friday, but since we’ve kind of finished with the whole camping thing, we’ve booked into a hotel for Thursday night as a bit of a treat. Thursday therefore is spent heading north on New Zealand’s version of the M1 - a one lane highway all the way up the east coast punctuated with ‘blink and you miss it’ towns. ...

23rd November 2009 This morning we picked up our campervan which is to be our home for the next two and a half weeks. To be brutally honest, we weren’t exactly enamoured of our little van when we first saw her, she was much smaller than we had envisaged and while she did have the advertised shower and toilet, the toilet is little more than a portaloo. I don’t really know what we expected, but this is it for the next little while. Also Ed can’t actually stand up straight in it which means I’ll be doing the cooking for the next couple of weeks, so from his point of view there is a bright side :). ...

22nd November 2008 Time for us to leave the North Island and take the early morning ferry to Picton. The ferry we caught used to be called the Pride of Cherbourg (you could still read its name on the side) and is the biggest passenger ferry in New Zealand. After such an early start we spent most of the initial part of the journey catching up on some sleep, but once the ferry started to move into Marlborough Sounds with its spectacular scenary and lush green backdrop we moved up onto deck to take a look. It was a brief look though since the weather hadn’t exactly warmed up since yesterday! ...