Subject: December 20: An amazing day and a so-so night in "The Garden City"
Date Sent: Mon, December 28, 2009 9:10:53 AM
Kia ora again,
My first stop after heading out of the hotel was the Christchurch gondola. I had seen the brochure of this in the airport and the hotel lobby, and the receptionist said it's open until "5 or 5:30" -- not really true, there is no set closing time. Anyway, I drove there without the help of the GPS and bought a ticket up. The wind was really picking up and it was a fun ride all the way to the top (445m ASL). The views were good, not great, but what I liked the most about it was the REFRESHING cold wind that was blowing in my face! It was fantastic after a 12 hours of being cooped up inside an airplane! I took pictures all around -- 360-degree views of the city and surrounding mountains, lakes and gardens. But the mountain is too short and the city center (sorry, "centre") too far to really have great views below. After about an hour or so I came back down in even harder winds, with the gondola rocking back and forth all the way down!
Next stop: New Brighton Beach and pier (a photo I had seen in a postcard at the gondola gift shop). For this I needed the GPS: After I got out of the gondola parking lot I made a wrong turn and got hopelessly lost somewhere to the southwest of the city. GPS to the rescue, and I was at the pier about 1/2 hour later. Nothing extraordinary -- I thought it was the same as any other pier (and I'm not a "beach person"), but in the postcard it looked really good! I walked down to the end, watched some people fishing from there and driving away the seagulls, then came back to the car. By this time it had started raining pretty hard and there was still one more major thing to do today, so I decided to go back to the hotel and get some rest... until 5:00 PM.
At that time it was time to go to the airport and pick up my passenger! First a little background story -- when I was in India in April I had told my cousins that I'd be going to NZ in December, and he said he wanted to come! This is someone who goes trekking in the Himalayas as often as I fly to Europe for the weekend! I admired his enthusiasm, so I said "YES -- come to NZ, you'd love it!" It was decided -- he was going to come, and I started looking forward to a trip where I wouldn't be alone. So him and his wife would make 2 traveling companions. Then some plans changed... he told a friend of his at work about this trip, and she also got super-excited and wanted to come too! OK... So now I had 3 passengers! Fine with me. We started chatting about it, getting even more excited about "the big New Zealand trip". A few months later, my cousin backed out! I still don't know why. Opportunity knocks very rarely, and when it does, PEOPLE SHOULD NOT BACK OUT FROM IT!!! Ok that was my rant... Kaustubh, I hope you read that last sentence 5-10 times :)
So now it was just me and Priya - the friend that my cousin Kaustubh had told. She was due to arrive in Christchurch at 5:30, and I went to pick her up. By the time we got back to the hotel, checked into her room, and left again, it was almost 7 or 7:30... we drove to the city "centre" and parked the car, walking to the Christchurch Cathedral. But because of the Sunday services there we couldn't go inside. Seemed like a nice place though, which is more than either of us can say about the city itself!
Christchurch -- the city -- was DEAD at night! There were no people on the streets after 8 or 9, and most of the shops and restaurants were closed! It was a little depressing to just roam around with nothing to do or see. We finally ate dinner and decided to go for a drive! I drove back to the place I had gotten lost in this morning, then made a semi-circle around the city and back to the hotel for the night...
Speaking of going for a drives, I now have roughly anywhere between 400-600km to drive today (depending on which path I take), so I'm going to sign off... December 21st email will be sent later. I've uploaded all the photos and you can see 18th and 20th photos here:
http://www.callmewanderer.com/austrlia/nz0910/index.html#TOP
Dec 21st onwards are "not yet available" and I'll make them public as soon as I've sent the emails for those dates.
Until then,... adios,
-me.
(p.s. There's a Denny's restaurant in Christchurch, which is the only Denny's I've seen outside of the U.S. No, dinner was not over there.)
From Ishaan's camera:
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From Priya's camera:
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| Dec 18 | Contents | Dec 21 |