I was actually in Christchurch twice, once for three days before I went to
Sydney and again before we left the south island. I generally considered this to be
a good thing because it was one of my favourite places, this road in particular. You
can't quite see it but in the shadow of the building across the road is the cafe where I
spent most of my time. These buildings used to be Christchurch University but now it
is the Arts Centre. I don't know where they moved the Uni to, I never found it.
These buildings are very English in style, which may be why I liked Christchurch so
much. It was significantly colder here than on the North Island and generally looked
a lot more wintery - no leaves on the trees, winter sunshine, that sort of thing.
| The first time I was here I tried to go skiing at Mt Hutt. I say 'tried' because the
conditions were so bad (snowing, zero visibility). This was really a shame because Mt Hutt is one of the larger ski areas in
NZ and had good snow when I was there, I just couldn't see where I was going at all and it
made me dizzy. Anyway, here is the map to show what I missed out on. I've got a funny feeling that only the yellow part was open when I was there. The mountain is about 900 acres, which is about twice the size as A-basin. |
 |
Anyway, back to 'Le Cafe' (that is what it is called). This place was great. I
spent a whole evening in there by myself, writing my diary, reading and pigging out on
apple crumble by the fireside. The YHA was just on the other side of the road, so I
didn't even have very far to go to get to my bed. When we went back there I noticed
that a lot of the people in the cafe were the same as the ones I had seen two weeks
earlier. You know a place is good when all the locals are there. One thing I
will say is that you probably have to like listening to Enigma and The HouseMartins if you
plan on spending multiple evenings in there, but their choice in music definately fits the
atmosphere inside, and I haven't listened to the HouseMartins in ages, so all was good.
When Jo, Will, Emma and I were there we spent about 6 hours! We had lunch,
played cards, had afternoon tea, pre-dinner wine and then dinner all without moving once!
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