So Sydney did eventually turn into the rest bite we had needed. Thursday turned into a lounge around and use up our food that we couldn't take on our flight day. We also packed our new suitcases and discarded of our rucksacks which were now falling apart! I'm definitely not a rucksack person and having a case with wheels is a definite improvement...my back agrees!

Friday we woke up early to check out of the hostel in Sydney. This involved a bit of sitting around and some beans on toast before we caught the shuttle to the airport.

This didn't take long and before we knew it we were sat in the airport awaiting our flight. I took it as an opportunity to catch up on an episode of made in chelsea...I see no point in missing out as I'm not at home! :)

The flight only took 3 hours but was late taking off. Decided to watch the episode of glee were they say goodbye to Cory Monteith and his character Finn. Not going to lie watching the episode and realising they were actually all crying for real was horrible and we both ended up in tears - the guy next to me looked rather uncomfortable and for the rest of the flight was extremely nice to me - pretty sure he thought I was some fragile woman who could burst out crying again at any moment. Anyway a couple of episodes of how I met your mother soon cheered me up and then we were landing.

Teamed now with an additional 2 hours on the time difference meant after the flight and taxi ride to the hostel we got into bed around 1.30am. Fell asleep pretty much straight away!

Woke in the morning after a really good nights sleep and decided to venture into Christchurch.

Everything people had told us before getting here was true. It's quite a depressing sight. A lot of the buildings are still falling down and nothing has been done to much of the city after the earthquake. The cathedral is basically standing there in disrepair and most businesses have packed up and left leaving it pretty much dead in places.

We managed to find a shopping mall with a bit of life where we could pick up some lunch and then followed our maps to find a phone shop so we could pick up some New Zealand SIM cards for our phones. Job done and we're now online again - phew!

We then pottered through a park to get back to the hostel instead of through the city again where we encountered lots of netball players...they definitely like the sport here! Whilst teams of people were running round being all energetic we decided ice cream was more appropriate for us so hit up the mr whippy van just further along. A slow walk back and we found a garage to pick up some dinner and then sat around the hostel for a bit, managing to lock ourselves out of our room once. Seems to be a Schofield trait to lock ourselves out of accommodation so quite surprised it's taken till now for me to do it!

Decided to have a quiet evening and just have a snack dinner in our room when a fight kicks off right outside our door - basically we can hear the whole thing unfolding which included a guy threatening another one with a knife. In the end the police had to be called and the guy carted off handcuffed into a police car - never a dull moment in hostels :/