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Christchurch
After 7 weeks we left Australia to fly to New Zealand. A 6 hour stopover in Auckland airport provided some enforced downtime as we waited for our cheapie flight to Christchurch and the south island. We'll be back to do Auckland later in the trip.
Arriving at our pre-booked hostel in Christchurch late at night shouldn't have been a problem except that they didn't have our booking. The ensuing discussion saw us refuse to pay for the wireless internet to show them the email confirmation we had received and the receptionist getting very defensive and denying responsibility until finally she offered us the largest room in the hostel at the same rate we would have paid for our booked room. This, as it turned out, was a right result as the room was ensuite and had a kitchen. The receptionists last words as we climbed the stairs were, 'I'm going to get in so much trouble for this that I hope it makes you feel at least slightly grateful towards me.' Nice. Alls well that ends well and all that though.
The following day we set out to explore Christchurch on foot, getting pretty cold and wet in the process. The raincoats and trainers had to come out for the first time in ages and we worked out that we'd seen a 20 degree drop in temperature in just 48 hours. We continued on our walking tour regardless though, sheltering in several second hand bookshops along the way.
Christchurch is a great city though and we had an interesting time wandering along the banks of the River Avon (deciding it was too wet to do any punting) and through the botanical gardens. We later found out that it had been designed by the same person who designed Adelaide which made a lot of sense as they're both fine cities.
By far the highlight of the tour was the fantastic Canterbuy museum - one of the best we've been to on our travels, even if one of the only reasons we went in there originally was to get dry (strange to think that a few days before we were going into museums to enjoy the air conditioning!) As well as interesting displays on the history of the area there was also an excellent exhibition of photographs from the local paper with detailed commentary which explained the subject and the context in which it was taken. Truly fascinating stuff covering local, national and international subjects.
By chance we saw that the Swedish film of the first book of Steig Larsson's Milennium Trilogy was showing at the art house cinema that evening. Having enjoyed the first two books already on our travels it was great to have an opportunity to see the film (if there's anybody reading this who hasn't yet read them we would definitely recommend them!) We're now just waiting for the third book to come into the second hand bookshops…
Next stop is to pick up our campervan for the next instalment of our campervan adventures…
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