jwg

After our 12 1/2 hr flight from LA to Auckland and a 1 1/2 hour flight (with a 3 hr gap) to Christchurch. Christchurch is on the east coast side of the South Island of NZ about 1/2 way down. (For those who want to know each island is about 500 mi long. We are starting on the South Island going by train across what they call the Southern Alps to the West Coast (where we are right now) and then heading north. We end up pretty close to the northern tip of the North Island.

Christchurch is a nice city - settled in the early 19th century to be like an English town with streets named after English cities, etc. We stayed in a hotel in Cathedral Square with a big Anglican church next door. There is an art center in a reconstructed imitation English college with galleries, restaurants, etc. The columns in the cloisters were decorated with weird, and sometime disturbing posters - an example here:


We went to the art museum which among other things had an exhibit of Maori weavings, the lovely and large botanical garden, a museum with exhibits of such things as the now extinct Moa and some artifacts from several trips to Antarctica.

There are sheep everywhere (not in the city) and needless to say we've had some pretty nice meals with lamb.

We rented a car for the day on Friday and explored the nearby Banks Peninsula
.

There were some pretty narrow roads and it did take a while to get used to right hand drive and shifting gears with the left hand. The directional signals are on the right and I've run the windshield wipers many times as a result.