New Zealand – Christchurch

We’ve been on a trip! From where we are now, it was a long trip. It is quite the odd experience to sit on a plane and watch the days collapse into each other, as you sit there for a night, a day, another night, and most of the next day …

 photo IMG_9558_zpsc3980cae.jpg

Five security check in 36 hours. It was a little draining. We arrived to see the best the Christchurch could offer us!

 photo IMG_1713_zpscd75dc32.jpg

Which made for exciting times on the roads as we wound our way through the flood waters to surprise our target on her birthday!

 photo IMG_9564_zps27a5bef3.jpg

The surprise was a HUGE success! There was much gasping of breath, clutching of chests, and crying through hysterical laughter! Though, some were more moved than others.

 photo IMG_9575_zpsad636011.jpg

The next day you’d never know there had even been rain. We headed out into the town to see what had changed in the two years since our last visit.

 photo IMG_9629_zps9e843429.jpg

Seeing the state of the Arts Centre was awful and yet hopeful all at once. It’s awful to see it in that state, but wonderful to see it being rebuilt too.

 photo IMG_9638_zpsb31ed5dd.jpg

It is one of the pieces of Christchurch that I miss terribly. It was always previously one of my happy places. Walking in and around all the artists and craftsmen plying their trade in the ancient halls. The smell of the wood turning, the colours of the yarn from the spinners guild, and the fudge from the Fudge Shop!

 photo IMG_9644_zps44e932fe.jpg

It was therefore gratifying to see that you could still purchase from some of the artists across the road from the rebuild! And purchase we did! For those of you follwing along on Twitter, you’ll know that we bought some fudge in the flavour of our wedding cake! The same flavour I’ve bought every visit since our Honeymoon; white chocolate and raspberry!

 photo IMG_9647_zps45a15f6d.jpg

From there it was up the street to the museum! It was wonderful to see it still standing, and open to the public!

Stay tuned for the rest of our massive trip in the coming days!

4 thoughts on “New Zealand – Christchurch

  1. Maybe the puppy was very moved and emotional and is sleeping in the photo to recover from the excitement? 😉

    Glad to see that they are working to repair and rebuild these spaces; in some cases, destruction is seen as an opportunity to focus resources elsewhere and rebuilding doesn’t take place. I hope they have enough funds and support to finish the project and restore the buildings fully.

    1. That could be it with regards to Benji!

      The difficulty with the locals is that what progress has been made so far is mostly infrastructure under the ground. From what we gathered in our brief time there, people are getting a little frustrated hearing about how much it’s all costing when they can’t “see” any progress. I think the above ground work is due to start any time now.

  2. Just reading your posts in order so I haven’t gotten to the ones after this yet……. I’m so excited for you being able to travel home and to surprise your loved one!!!! Off to look at the pics!!!!

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.