Shaken, Not Stirred

Today we explored Christchurch. It is such an interesting city. In February 2011 it experienced a rather devastating earthquake. The Central Business District (main area of the city) sustained quite a lot of damage and you can still see the re-building efforts three years later. This city is also quite British. My mind is spinning and, even though I slept quite well last night, and it's only 6:30pm, I am still pretty tired, so I'm just going to share some quick thoughts and photos. Yes, today you get photos!!!

This is me after my first experience of driving. If you notice, the steering wheel is on the right, and the roads are also reversed. To be honest, my first "experience" was driving less than half a mile from a shopping centre to our destination, but a few hours later, I actually drove for a whole sixteen minutes about halfway across the city. It was fun but takes a lot of mental energy. But I. Did. It!!!

Dave and Marika did a three hour session of bone carving and Dave made me a beautiful necklace. Donny and I headed to the Christchurch Farmer's Market. It was amazing. I wish I could have bought some of the flowers and some of the food. I did buy a baked pretzel and the world's best cafe mocha. Oh. Yum.

To no one's surprise, I spent quite a while at the Botanical Gardens. I spent most of my time at the Central Rose Garden and the Heather Garden. I really loved this dahlia border surrounding the Central Rose Garden.

New Zealand is currently having the 100 Egg Hunt. There are various artistic eggs throughout Christchurch, Auckland and Wellington. I had fun searching out some of the Christchurch ones. You can be sure that more of these eggs will show up on the blog as we hit Wellington and Auckland :)

The RE:Start Mall is a shopping centre totally based out of shipping containers. It is Christchurch's answer to re-building after the earthquake. This was a really cool thing to see. The Hummingbird Coffee company was where I got my excellent cafe mocha at the farmer's market this morning. Since this location was so convenient this afternoon, I got another one :)

So here's a quick glimpse of my day today. Internet access here is a little sporadic. Donny explained that it's because there is only one internet cable which serves all of New Zealand so there's not a lot of capacity for internet here. I guess we're kind of spoiled in Canada and the US when it comes to unlimited internet access. Anyways, I'll do my best to keep you all updated as much as I can. (And also I want to preserve as many memories as possible while they are fresh in my mind.)

Oh, and today is New Zealand's Fall time change so we get an extra hour of sleep tonight. Yay! It's also strange that we are loving the amazing weather and it is technically Fall here. The leaves are changing colours and everything.

*To read about Day 3, go here.