a 'pretty', 'quaint', 'quite English' city

I took the airport flyer bus to the centre of Christchurch, Cathedral Square which, unsurprisingly, has a cathedral in it. It's a pretty area ('pretty' may be overused in descriptions of Christchurch, along with quaint and 'quite English'), and functions as a lunch-spot, meeting place, skateboard park and general gathering place for entertainers (including a couple who can only be described as 'crusties'; the guy playing bongoes while his girlfriend juggled inexpertly) which gets busier towards lunchtime, and in the early evening. There's also a giant chess board, where small crowds gathered, fascinated, throughout the day to watch people play with the large plastic pieces. The tram stop is to one side of the square, and around the edge are the I-Site information centre, cafes and shops, and it's near the tramstop where I get off the bus.

It took about two minutes from reaching the corner of the square for me to get lost (I'm getting almost comfortable with getting lost... it's seems unnatural to arrive anywhere without having had to backtrack, peer at the map a few times, and possibly ask directions), but eventually I made it to the Around the World Backpackers, which is only about fifteen minutes (a looong fifteen minutes with a heavy bag!) from the Square itself. I went straight from dumping my bag there to Pak'N'Save, a twenty minute walk away. Pak'n'Save is the super-budget supermarket of NZ - the shelves filled with all kinds of discount goods, kind of like Macro or somewhere like that, but bigger - you feel tiny wandering round the towering aisles with an equally giant trolley. But it is very, very cheap.

The hostel was busy, mostly with long-termers (some had been living there 3 months!), who were working either at the hostel or at various jobs in town. This gave it a chilled out, homely atmosphere (they even had a cute, fluffy, very affectionate cat called Oreo), but also a slightly cliquey one. The kitchen was packed at dinner, but it was kind of hard to talk to people when they all knew each other. Still, my roommates were pretty nice, luckily, because the room was 'cosy' to say the least - made the more so by all 3 other girls being long-termers who had, understandably, unpacked and moved in properly.

One thing I did notice though, was that all the people I met at Around the World who had been travelling long-term (6months-2years!) were absolutely useless at listening; during every conversation you could just sense them waiting for their turn to speak. I don't know if it's something to do with them travelling on their own, or maybe they're just so excited about their adventures that they need to spill them all out without interruption, but it got a bit tiring, so in the end I just let them talk. Maybe I'll be the same when I've been travelling for a while (hopefully not).

I crashed out early and got up even earlier when one of the other girl's left for her job at the ANZ bank call-centre. First stop was the Cathedral, which was... cathedral-like. Pretty, though. Then I walked down Worcester St to the Botanic Garden, passing by some very cute and quaint houses on the way. Most of the main 'sites' are in the older part of town, characterised by the old colonial-style houses and grey-and-white stone buildings, which are quite 'English', but with a twist. The Botanic Gardens were a really nice spot to chill out for a couple of hours; a massive area of greenery with the river Avon flowing through it, carrying along ducks, tourists on punts and kayakers (i got slightly mugged by ducks when I decided to donate some bread to two who were nearby; cue ten others waddling up to me, quacking expectantly).
I also checked out the Christchurch Art Gallery, Te Puna O Waiwetu where there were some pretty good modern exhibits, including one on The Naked and The Nude (a helpful sign outside the door warned, "This exhibit contains, well, nakedness and nudity").
Near to the gallery was the Arts Centre, a collection of art galleries, craft shops, cafes and artists workshops in a pretty (...) maze of white-and-grey stone buildings with trees and squares dotted about.
After resisting the call of craft shopping, I headed back to the Cathedral Square to chill out for a bit, before going back to the hostel for dinner, repacking my already totally disorganised bag, and then crashing out, before creeping out at 7am to catch my Magic bus to Kaikoura.

And that was Christchurch, a very pretty city, but still a city. Everyone at the hostel told me that it's a great place to live but not so fantastic to pass through, which I can believe, since so many of them had stayed there so long.

written by  LizIsHere on February 9, 2010 from Christchurch, New Zealand
from the travel blog: New Zealand & Australia 2010
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