Christchurch

Greetings from Christchurch, New Zealand!

Here is a picture of the Cathedral in the middle of Cathedral Square where our hotel is. They say this is the most visited church in the world. I would love to show you a right-side-up picture but as I'm paying dearly for the internet connection in this hotel and it would take me a while to figure out how to rotate it, I'm going to let you turn your head to see it better because that's free!!



There are big red and black chess pieces in this picture that people use to play real games of chess. We sat there and watched while we ate lunch yesterday and, I think, during the 20 minutes we were there, the men playing moved their pieces a total of 3 times between the two of them. Riveting.



Then we hired a canoe and paddled down the river for a bit. It was a cool day yesterday with wind but other than that it was lovely. A bit slow-paced for my liking but a nice way to see Christchurch from a different vantage point. We met a few baby ducks along the way. They seem to know that their hatching time down under is in December rather than June. Good they know that.





This is a picture of what was in front of me while canoeing.

And this is a picture of what was behind me.

Today, we drove 90 minutes away from Christchurch to a town called Akaroa. Oh. My. God was it beautiful. This picture is a bit washed out but hopefully you can get the gist of the hills surrounding the bay. We pulled over to take this picture as we rounded one of the bends. The steep and curvy drive there reminded us of what we see when we watch the Tour de France. We rounded one last curve after we reached the summit and this view opened up in front of us. I could almost hear the angels singing. We drove back down this side of the hills and spent the day at the beach of the farther body of water you can see here. Akaroa is an adorable little town that we had fun walking around in. We had the most delicious raspberry frozen yogurt I’ve ever stolen bites from my husband and children made right in front of us. There was a section of beach that was carpeted with those seashells that look like ice cream cones. Gabe and Jordan got to take home 5 shells each and they had a blast picking out the five exact right ones. I took home about 3-4 dozen (shhhh.) I am dying to understand why the animal that lives in that particular shell chooses to live near that section of the beach and what made them all vacate their shells en masse so that they would all wash up on shore and if that happens every day.

Anyway, the kids played joyfully in the sand and in the water while Mark and I watched them, read our books and talked about how we might find our way back here again some day.

Gabe lost a tooth today in Akaroa. He’d been trying to keep it in until we got to New Zealand so he could have the experience of losing one in NZ. We’re expecting another one to fall out in the next few months, so he’ll get to lose one in Australia too. Jordan is hoping to lose her first tooth in Australia. This way, we’ll get to experience first hand the habits of Aussie and Kiwi tooth fairies. My guess is that they pretty much do the same thing here that they do in the States but I’ll let you know.

For my fellow sushi lovers, I have to tell you a sad story. We haven’t seen any sushi restaurants at all in Newcastle. To avoid hyperventilation, I just tell myself it is because we haven’t found it yet, not because it doesn’t exist. So when we saw a whole slew of sushi restaurants in Christchurch, I breathed a sigh of relief. Just knowing they are here was calming. So tonight, we were told that, while most of them are closed due to this 3-day holiday we are apparently observing, there was one around the corner that was highly recommended. But sadly, that restaurant wasn’t serving sushi tonight—just their other fare. Seriously? So we went to another restaurant and get this: they have fresh (raw) fish for nigiri (fish on rice) but they don’t use fresh fish for rolls. They only used cooked tuna. And they were out of salmon. They said that using fresh fish for rolls was too expensive but they didn’t seem to have a problem serving fresh fish on rice and that was reasonably priced. So after trying for a few minutes to understand, we finally just sulked out. It was heartbreaking to be so close, yet so far. But you never know what might be right around the corner. That story isn’t over yet.

Tomorrow we leave Christchurch and start heading south. Who knows when we’ll have internet access again but we’ll stay in touch as we can. Hope you are all enjoying the start of 2008.