What a difference a day makes ! The sun has been shining and our moods have been lifted. After a little panic over the little camera and its loss, now resolved we left at about 10:20. We headed over to Hagley Park and the Botanic Gardens as this was the quickest way to the city centre. Well I say that but we have two small children who have a homing instinct for play parks. We managed to persuade them not to paddle but they had a really good play on the othe...

The weather today was overcast turning to blooming miserable with showers, no to be fair it was just rain, rain and more rain. We started fairly late today and decided to take things easy with a trip to the Antarctic Centre.We arrived there about 11:30 and decided to do the basic tour as we felt the up close and personal would be too much for the girls to cope with. We spent a while in the four seasons room but Alex was a little spooked by it so we ended up pop...

We awoke to a very miserable day and the prospect of not seeing Mount Cook at all, we were all grumpy anyway as Swansea Real Estate called at 4am again. After a difficult start we were away before 10 and headed up to Lake Pukeki for the Mount Cook viewpoint. When we arrived you could see nothing but clouds so David popped into the information centre for a weather forecast and was told things were clear at Mount Cook Village. The drive to Mount Cook village was...

Today we checked out and left our luggage in the motel office. The day was very grey and uninviting so we just walked into the town and on the way popped into a clothes shop. I fell as we came out as it was very slippy. I did not find a replacement T-shirt here but I did in the main town.The first visit was to the small museum which although interesting reminded me a little of a junk shop with a hotch potch of everything all over the place. It really was a sn...