Sunday, May 25, 2008

Christchurch!

Oops! It occurs to me that whilst prattling on about all of our road trip adventures, I may have neglected to mention that we found an apartment and we’re living in Christchurch! We’ve been here for two months already! :o Time flies when you’re having yummy vegan pies at the Gravity Café! =) Christchurch is a lovely, gardeny city of roughly 400,000 people- it’s the largest city on the South Island and the second largest in the country (after Auckland). There’s a beautiful cathedral in the square (Christ Church Cathedral) which is especially striking at night when the stained glass is all lit up. The river Avon runs right through the centre of town, and there are all kinds of beautiful places around which to meander like the banks of the river and the botanical gardens. It’s all nice and flat here, too, so all that meandering doesn’t completely tucker you out. =) The city is up to its ears in used book stores- soooo tempting, but not so good for the weight of my luggage! Otherwise I could seriously spend days browsing in Smith’s Bookshop- a three-story book lover’s Mecca… Quite possibly the best bookstore I have been to in any country (though it must be said that the old Book Nook in Atlanta served me very well in days gone by). There are tons of great cafés and bars and movie theatres around, and they’re all very easy to get to from our prime central city location. =) Everyone should visit. =) So far we’ve had two houseguests. First was Keri, who only had two days with us due to our opposite travel schedules, and very unluckily for her those days happened to be the ones when we were moving into our new apartment! :o I wish we’d had a little more time together, but it was fun to catch up and make stir-fry together in our new place! (Here’s a picture of the three of us- Keri is showing her excitement about the variety of ice cream flavours NZ has to offer.) Then came Gretchen, with whom we had a great time wandering around the city, going out for coffee (see photo), and watching terrible movies on TV late into the night while gorging ourselves on “blobs,” our new favourite chocolatey addiction. (E-mail me if you want the recipe- they’re YUM!) It’s been great fun having visitors- next in line is our friend Jo from Nottingham! Can’t wait to see her in July! =) We love our cute little (coldish) flat in the Garden City, but miss all of our peeps abroad- hope to see some of you soon when you come for ski holidays in August! =)

2 comments:

S. said...

Hello Sarah!
I´ve read your comment.
I´m spanish but I´m in an English school since I was 4. I spend all the time I can with animals, even I wanna study biology in university.
Bye

Gordon Simpson said...

Rumour has it skiing may start as soon as next week, so you don't need to wait until August!