We are currently sitting in our room in Christchurch (CC) drinking some fabulous Australian Shiraz and talking about our trip. We had a long day today, getting up at 6:45AM Sydney time to catch a 3 hour flight over to New Zealand. CC is 2 hours ahead of Sydney, so by the time we landed it as 3PM CC time. We think it's pretty cool that we will be the first ones to celebrate New Years in THE WORLD!!! We are now 19 hours ahead of the US.
Our time in CC is limited, so we tried to make the best of our one night here. As soon as we landed, we got changed and started to explore. Christchurch is recognized as New Zealand's Garden City and boasts 740 parks, including 13 major metropilotan parks covering 7500 acres. Currently, CC is in bloom with beautiful roses everywhere! This was originally a British colony, founded in 1850.
CC is most known for it's beautiful Botanic Gardens, we obviously loved walking through these. The Botanic Gardens are over 120 years old now and considered to be one of the finest collections of exotic and indegenous plants to be found anywhere in New Zealand.
The Botanic Gardens, while beautiful, are not the only well known area of CC. CC is also known for its expansive number of privately owned art gllaeries.
The architecture here is also superb. It reminds us a lot of Temple Bar in Dublin, Ireland. The cobblestone streets with new and old buildings give the city a lot of character. You will see on Picasa there are brand new 21st century buildings among older 18th centruy sandstones. Among these older buildings, is the CC cathedral, which is a beautiful building. We sat here tonight watching the choir practice for their New Years Eve mass.
We've enjoyed our short stay in CC. We are getting up early again tomorrow to catch the TransAlpine to Grey Mouth. This is the Train that takes you up through the central part of the South Island. We will stop in Grey Mouth, which is the center of the NZ Glaciers, where we will rent a car and explore the region. We are staying in a local lodge at the base of Fox Glacier, so I'm not sure we will have internet access, so no worries if you don't hear from me for a few days...
Cheers.
Jenn
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