I’m doing a 5 city mini tour of New Zealand and my second stop is Christchurch (still on South Island). Don’t worry, I’ve had to zoom out on Google maps a few times to figure out where in the world I am… I am also ashamed to admit I didn’t realize how this might probably be the closest to Antarctica I’ll get. Seriously, it took going to the Canterbury museum today and an exhibit on Antarctica to make me realize how close I am. After all this traveling, my geography is still horrible. Oops!
I can’t go on with today’s recap without mentioning the fact that I cried yesterday morning when I realized Uber wouldn’t pick me up from my B&B in Queenstown and that I couldn’t properly dial an international phone number to get a taxi in a heavily residential area. First time crying on this portion of the trip (yes, I realize it’s still pretty early on) but I only cried twice on Adventure Part One. And yes, I did make it to the airport on time with the help of the B&B owner who called me a taxi.
I’ve already looked and since Christchurch is a bigger city, there should be no issue with getting an Uber. In either case, I’m prepared to call a cab if I need to. Let this be a lesson: even if you got somewhere with Uber, you might not be able to get a return ride. So be better prepared than me and you won’t have to cry in front of strangers.
Last night I downloaded one of the coolest apps I’ve come across in researching destinations. It’s called “GPSmyCity” and it has walks you can download for free of over 400 cities and descriptions of the places on the walks. For a price, you can upgrade and get turn by turn directions for the walk but I’m pretty savvy at navigating so I haven’t paid. And I probably won’t. So with the help of the “Christchurch Orientation Walk,” I hit a lot of highlights and walked over 4 miles. Some of the highlights include:
New Regent Street – built in 1930s in Spanish Mission architectural style.
And the tram runs right through there so watch where you’re going! After Regent Street, I walked past the Isaac Theatre Royal (British English spellings on everything since this city was heavily influenced by England). Then, serendipitously, I stumbled upon Christchurch’s Thrill The World dance event at Cathedral Square. It kind of loses it’s dark, thriller appeal at 11am on a Sunday but over 20 countries were taking part in this event AT THE SAME TIME!
And no, I did not participate. I missed the dance lesson portion and clearly wasn’t wearing the proper costume/attire.
Cathedral Square was nice but a little sad. History time…In September 2010, a very large earthquake hit Christchurch destroying a lot of buildings in it’s wake. Then, about 5 months later (February 2011), another earthquake hit and the city is still rebuilding from the loss of old buildings and of people. More on that in a minute. A picture of the Cathedral before the earthquake, courtesy of Wikimedia:
And here’s what I saw today:
Very sad indeed when history is essentially erased. However, the city of Christchurch has done a good job in attempting to rebuild. In fact, there’s a ton of construction going on and my hostel is essentially a construction man accommodation – there are signs everywhere about keeping tools out of the rooms and work boots outside. And yet, I’m still having trouble finding a man. Go figure! Also, there are a lot of art installations around the city to fill the empty spaces – like this one of 185 white chairs meant to symbolize the number of lives that were lost during those major earthquakes.
I also visited the Canterbury Museum which had free admission and a lot of cool exhibits. I highly recommend it but avoid the earthquake section…I took this picture of what might be the worst place to have chosen for Adventure Part Two (each dot represents earthquakes and look at the Southern Hemisphere). You can’t even see New Zealand. Eek!
Tomorrow I have some other landmarks and attractions to check out but Christchurch is really cool and the people are all extremely nice. Insanely nice and polite. Case in point, when the plane landed, nearly 2/3 of the passengers remained seated. No one jumped up out of their seat only to stand in the aisle. And in another bizarre, Twilight Zone episode moment, when it was time to disembark, people were not rushed and fellow passengers helped pull luggage down for other people. America needs to learn to do better in this regard. You do you New Zealand and keep it up! We can all learn a little bit about human kindness from the Kiwis.
There She Goes... 