Nothing could have gone smoother on our various
flights and connections, which after 36 plus hours of combined travel and
layovers found us safely into Christchurch, New Zealand.
Well... almost nothing. We exhaustedly disembarked off of our last flight, a 3-1/2 hour jaunt across the Tasman Sea from Brisbane, Australia to Christchurch when at baggage retrieval, we discovered one of our pieces of luggage had been torn to shreds as part of the various transfers from one plane to the next. Luckily, as far as we could tell, none of its contents, most of which were MK’s, hadn’t spilled out or were missing. The airline personnel sympathized with our situation and helped us in filing a claim. It sounded like they would reimburse us the cost of our need to buy a new bag since this one was no longer useable.
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| One of many public murals and art pieces - or is it MK after seeing her shredding piece of luggage? |
If there is one thing I dislike more than shopping in a mall, it’s shopping in a mall while on vacation. But, that is one of the first things we had to do. A bus delivered us to the Westfield Mall where we bought a new duffel bag for MK. We didn’t linger and headed right back to the city center to explore its offerings and walk about like proper tourists.
Our first impression is that Christchurch is a younger person’s city. There are to be sure oldsters like us. In fact, we saw a few who were looking, where else, for a dinner place our first night at 4pm (blue plate special anyone?). How do we know this? Well, we too were looking for dinner at this hour. Other than this and in a few more instances, most of those we encountered on the streets were the 40 and under crowd.
This fine city, full of friendly and proud
people, is still recovering from the deadly 2011 Canterbury earthquake where
185 people were killed. The following morning we wanted to learn more. I
thought best not to ask the young man, passed out on the sidewalk from last
night’s revelry. He was lying in the nook of an office building entrance, his face
covered with tattoos. Instead, we ducked into a coffee shop where the friendly lady
barista told us more of what we wanted to know.
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| 185 chairs serve as a memorial to each person killed in the 2011 earthquake |
A massive building and infrastructure restoration and reconstruction effort could be seen on every block. Cranes, jackhammers, and workers in hard hats and orange vests were everywhere.
Beautiful monuments, museums, parks, and civic
buildings - those that survived the earthquake- gave us tourists many fine
stops along the way on our self-guided walk throughout the city. Trams jauntily
motored throughout the city center. The Avon River was filled with canoeists
and tourists on punting boats with a young man at the helm. Riverside pubs
quenched our thirst. One of them kindly watched over my left behind backpack,
waiting for me to return a couple of hours later after I finally realized it
was not attached to my back.
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| Note how a good seismic rating is used to market this hotel |
Some sites, however, were hopelessly ruined
since there was no evidence of any attempts at salvaging the badly damaged
buildings located there. Most notable was the Christchurch Cathedral. Once it
was proudly dominating the town’s central square, but now is a derelict site
overgrown with weeds while housing pigeons and other vermin.
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| The once proud Cathedral |
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| A former office building |
The main park hosted a ‘night of noodles”
festival where we hungrily ate pad thai and other Asian dishes. A nearby grocery
store had supplies for us to stock up on for tomorrow’s long bus ride to
Queenstown and our upcoming several night’s stay at a hostel where we would be
cooking our own food. We were later awoken in the wee hours by the sounds of a
couple fighting and arguing over something we couldn’t discern, even though it
was right outside our bedroom door. Neither was backing down. It was to win at
all costs and lasted for a while, at least until after we both drifted back to
sleep when they took their verbal sparring down the hallway.
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