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Saturday 17th March - Happy St Patricks Day!
Simon and I are on different flights to Christchurch with his coming in much later on tonight. On my flight I sit next to Alex who is a trainer for an electronics company. Turns out he's also a huge fan of his own country and has loads of pictures he's happy to show me on his laptop. He's also more than willing to rave about all the places I should visit.
I get the bus into town and walk past the massive irish pub which has a live band in the beer garden and is packed with people wearing green and drinking guiness.
I wander around and discover that Christchurch looks like most small english towns with a church plonked right in the middle of it next to some modern art structure. There are also all the usual teenage kids hangin' out on street corners, perched trying to look cool on some large modern art triangle thingy (see photos).
I eat dinner and chat to a girl from Manchester. Then at the bus stop on the way back to the airport I speak to a lovely family who are living in Tahiti, the lady is english and he's french. Hmm - can't get away from these brits - hee hee.
The bus ride back to the airport is hilarious as the bus driver hasn't done this route in years so we end up getting a bit lost and I'm shouting directions at her as I'm one of only three people on the bus and the other two don't know where they are going. She's on the radio to her control centre as well exclaiming that she didn't know this car park had been built here and the road had changed there. All very funny.
Sunday 18th March
Simon and I head into Christchurch and do the tourist thing - we get on the tram! We laugh at how english the town is and you would expect with the british weather, the heavens open and we get rained upon.
We head out of town and go to Tai Tapu where we are staying with Simon's relatives; Adrian and Sue and their sons Alex (14) and Luke (5). Adrian has spent the last 2.5 years building their house which we stay in. It's work in progress as upstairs isn't quite finished yet and there aren't any stairs up there, but it's a beautiful building and quite an undertaking to do on his own.
We also meet Jean, Adrian's sister who we'll be staying with in Cromwell near Queenstown.
Monday 19th March
We drive to Akaroa which is down the Banks Peninsula. It's beautiful and reminds me of Lake Garda in Italy. On the way back we stop off at Barry's Bay to buy wine (Pinot Gris) and cheese for our hosts and we're lucky enough to sample our purchases that night over dinner. Yum!
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