Day 113

We arrived on the evening of the 18th July and we thought our hostel was a 10 minute walk, although it turned out to be a marathon. Once at our hostel it took us an hour to boil rice so by the time dinner was done we were starving. After dinner we just watched TV in our room.

The following day we had a lot planned although it was raining so we had to change our plans. Our first stop was Christchurch Cathedral, where we met a lovely guide called Quentin Sumner. He told us all about the architecture, and interestingly some of the parts in the church had come from Aston, Birmingham and he knew of Stourbridge.

We then had a walk around the duty free as we heard from some old ladies on our coach that it was good, although we thought it was distinctly average. From here we went to the Contemporary Art Gallery, another gallery but we needed somewhere warm and dry, and we do both like contemporary art so it was a bonus.

From here we walked to the Botanical Gardens as we'd read that Christchurch was named the City of Gardens and we thought it would be a nice place to have a stroll. However, due to the cold weather all the outside areas had been pruned back, but some of the inside displays were ok. We wanted to have a look at the Bonsai Tree's so we could send Chris a photo, but to no avail.

One of the other things we had wanted to do was take a Punt down the River Avon as Christchurch is the most English City in New Zealand. However, the weather did not permit us.

We were going to spend a few more days in Christchurch but we checked the weather forecast and it was rubbish; the things we wanted to do weren't possible so we decided it would be best to move on.