From Cardboard To Natural Cathedrals

It's Tuesday night as I write this and I apologize that I haven't been blogging for the past few days and now you're going to get a couple of posts in a short amount of time. I want to take you back to Sunday morning when we worshiped at the Cardboard Cathedral. The Christchurch earthquake made the Anglican Cathedral too unstable to worship in, so someone came up with the idea of building a new cathedral out of shipping containers and cardboard. The end result is quite incredible. I loved the simplicity of the new Transitional Cathedral, as the congregation refers to it.

We attended a Vespers service here and between the singing, the beauty of the building, and the parts of the service which were in Maori, it was quite lovely. The only thing which got in the way was my insane coughing fit during the reading of the gospel. Blah :(

After the service we went back to the Botanical Gardens to see the New Zealand gardens. They were unique and beautiful.

Then we started the first leg of our road trip. New Zealand highways are unlike any I've ever been on. The speeds are fairly fast (100km/60 miles per hour), considering how twisty, narrow, and hilly the roads are. We stopped at a winery to look around and to catch our breath :)

We then continued on our way until we saw a sign for a "Scenic Route" and decided to take it. We eventually ended up at something called "Cathedral Lookout." It was incredible! The views were indescribable and I don't even know if our pictures captured it.

And eventually, after about three hours of driving, we ended up at Lavendyl, the lavender farm where we spent the night. It was very inviting after our first day of road tripping.

*To read about how I spent Day 4, go here. To read about how Dave spent Day 4, go here.