Last day in New Zealand - January 7, 2010

Welp, we checked out what Christchurch had to offer. The city has a modern feel to it without losing some of its late-1800s feel. Most of the buildings and streets were clean. Even the older buildings were skillfully maintained.



Christchurch had a welcoming park centralized downtown. This “central park” included, among others, a meandering stream, national museum, and botanical gardens. The stream allowed for canoeing, kayaking, and “punting” (think Venetian boats). We didn’t do any of the stream activities, though they seemed decent.

Instead, we visited the Canterbury Museum and botanical gardens. The Canterbury Museum was pretty commonplace, as far as museums go. The Museum had interesting exhibits about Pacific/Antartic exploration from the Polynesians to Captain Cook. The botanical gardens were similarly mediocre; roses, native fauna, etc.

Literally stopping to smell the roses:




Colin at the Peace Bell in the garden:


We also stopped into the cathedral located in the city’s central square. Meh. I’ll take St. Patrick’s or St. John the Divine. You could probably fit Christchurch’s cathedral inside the walls of St. John the Divine. I guess Christchurch gets a pass for being about 1/30 the size of NYC.




For the remainder of the day we putzed around Christchurch. I should note that we stopped into the Public Library. I was pretty impressed with the Library’s facilities and its free Wifi. Well played Christchurch.

We couldn’t putz around too much because we had to catch a flight out of Christchurch to Auckland. This flight ultimately marked the end of our time in NZ. The goodbye was messy because our flight from Christchurch to Auckland left Christchurch at 8:20PM and arrived in Auckland at about 9:40PM. That, itself, is not too bad. The bad part came when we had to catch another flight from Auckland to Cairns, Australia, at 6:45AM the next morning.

The dilemma we faced was whether to: (a) sleep (insufficiently and poorly) in the Auckland airport because we had to check-in for the international flight at 4:45AM; or (b) sleep (insufficiently) in a hostel located close to the Auckland airport. We chose option (b) because, as much fun as sleeping in airports can be, we figured eating the overnight stay cost to shower and sleep in a decent bed topped the other option.

In hindsight, I’m not sure we chose correctly. The hostel we stayed in was probably the most janky establishment we’ve stayed in so far. It gave hostels a bad name. And that’s saying something. Plus, though the hostel employee gave us a ride to and from the Auckland airport, he was delirious from sleep-deprevation (he spent all night picking up/dropping off other travelers). If we had stayed in the airport, we could have enjoyed playing with metal detectors, sleeping on the floor, and large bathrooms all to ourselves.

C’est la vie. NZ was exceptional. So much to do. So little time. Even less money. I highly recommend any part of NZ to any one who can swing the time/money. In fact, we might go with you.

On to Australia.