We have really enjoyed our time in Christchurch. A great place to wean us into New Zealand life. Our initial reaction whilst arriving was how like England it was, later on finding out that Christchurch was founded by the British 158 years ago and so still remains the tree filled parks, meandering rivers, and many English looking buildings - with historical gothic style architecture. The main means of transport around the CBD was also by old school trams, which added to the English culture, really nice! The city centre is based around Cathedral Square, where the famous cathedral is. It was really beautiful and was one of the buildings that portrayed gothic style architecture the most. As we arrived mid Easter week, we decided it would be really special to watch the 'Contores' sing in the cathedral on Hash Wednesday evening. It was such an icy cold night so before the choir started, Chris and I went for a hot chocolate at Star Buck's on the opposite side of the square to warm ourselves up. Inside the cathedral was absolutely beautiful, with huge stone arches, stained glass windows and a wooden beam ceiling - which gave a cosy winter feel. The young choir sang and they were amazing. We've never heard anything like it! There were 24 young voices - aged around 23-35. Even the guys could reach those high notes. They all sang in harmony and didn't have one flaw at all throughout the whole hour. No wonder all of the oldies were raving about it that afternoon haha.

Whilst wondering around the streets we also visited the Arts and Crafts Centre, with a wood turning workshop, a wool shop with the most amazing sheep skin slippers that we are going to by when back at home and a wine store that also sold delicious local products, for example dressings and chutneys etc. We also found an amazing fudge cottage, a real oldie worldy shop. The women wore Victorian style hats and uniforms and the shop was covered in hand crafted confectionary. We decided to do a fudge tour, where we could experience the making of chocolate cream fudge - and taste all the different fudge flavours, yummy!! Our fav's were Baileys, Hokey pokey (honeycomb), and the chocolate and cream, which we also got to test warm and melted as well. It's no wonder fudge tastes so good now we know what's in it haha. Sugar..... Sugar ...... and more sugar!

To work of all the fudge we decided to take a walk around the botanical gardens, it was full of flower and rose gardens, as well as some of NZ's fauna, set in wide open spaces with the Avon River running through it. We were quite lucky to catch a glimpse of a couple punting on the river - the 'punter' was dressed in old fashioned clothing and was putting in some elbow grease, guiding the boat with a large pole, much like they do in Venice. Anyway in the park we sat and enjoyed some lunch and a flask of tea, with our new op shop clothing, to keep us warm. We got some killer bargains Woolies!

Our favourite part of Christchurch was Worcester Street, which is where the Arts Gallery, Arts and Craft Centre and Canterbury Museum were. The street is filled with really old historical gothic buildings, and the tram line runs right the way through. We visited the large modern Art Gallery, but it didn't particularly enthrall us, however the building was quite impressive. To us a lot of Modern Art seems too ridiculous to be art. For example one of the pieces in the White Room was a row of white figured men, the same, but different sizes????? Apparently that's art!! We did however visit Canterbury Museum - which was a lot more interesting. Here there were displays of Maori culture, as well as the history of the early European settlers. It was here we saw skeletons of huge birds called Moa's, which the Maori use to hunt 900 years ago. They are now extinct however. The displays showed really well how they use to live and how they used different natural resources as a means of surviving. One example was of a women soaking pigeons in their own body fat to preserve them for winter, eek! Anyway the museum was really informative and well set out and the best part was that it was free.

During our stay in Christchurch we also tried out NZ's fish and chips, not bad at all - especially for the price of 1.80 each, we discovered that 'pack and save' supermarket will be our new best friend and that op shopping is the way forward whilst on a budget. More importantly it is also where we picked up our funky escape campervan; the theme of this one is 'Fat Freddy's Drop' which will be our home for the next 6.5 weeks ... yippee!!