Christchurch

Christchurch. Home of Heavenly Creatures' Parker and Hulme and Ernest Rutherford. Self-styled as the most English City in New Zealand. Built as a planned Church of England community in the South Seas, Christchurch seems to exude a slightly sterile air, and a sense of menace after dark. It's no wonder the youth are driven to homicide ; )

Not that we had an unpleasant time, but after having spent seven years in the UK, the things I like about NZ landscape, buildings and people are not really imitation English buildings and willows weeping over the Avon. While there are arresting buildings and art around Cathderal Square, the residents seem to have deserted the city centre for the endless suburbs. In fact, as Dan commented on the mini-van trip out to Hanmer, it seemed like Hamilton ... only bigger. And Hamilton at least is near to Auckland...

Regional prejudices aside, we had a fun time in Christchurch - a lot of it wandering the streets and wondering where it was exactly that Christchurch people went to have a fun time! ; )

Actually instead of writing what we did, maybe I could make this blog into a series of witty put-downs about Christchurch! But instead I shall write a list of Good Things about Christchurch:

1) I don't have to live there permanently.... (sorry, couldn't resist that one)
2) The Modern Art Gallery - where a giant supine bunny greets you. Saw a really moving video installation there about the Erebus crash (for those who don't know what this is, it was when a Air New Zealand sight-seeing plane crashed into Mt Erebus in Antarctica killing everyone on board in the late 1970s). Part of it included some restored film recovered from the wreckage, which shows people moving round the cabin, drinking, pointing out the window etc.
3) Funky Lyttleton and Banks Peninsula - if I absolutely had to live in Christchurch, I'd probably live in the funky port of Lyttleton, which seemed like a mini-Wellington, with views across the harbour that looked like landscape paintings (there's a photo of one view in this post)
4) The gondola - expensive trip up but you get a great view over both Christchurch and Lyttleton harbour from the top.
5) Rutherford's den - a restored set of rooms in the old Victorian Gothic University buildings, which now house the Arts Centre, showing the first lab and rooms of Nobel prize-winning scientist Ernest Rutherford. It was a really interesting display and made me wish I'd kept doing science at school...
6) Amusing signage and sculptures around the centre of town (see pictures)
7) Amazing Bailey's Irish Cream fudge from the Fudge Cottage. As Mudhoney might have said, every good girl deserves fudge...

All-in-all a good trip and a much-need break from work. Just seven more weeks till the next one.....