Sightseeing in Christchurch

At 6:30am I wake up, but doze off until 8:00am. Then Eric and I decide to get up. For breakfast, we have Pam's cereal and black tea. We leave the hostel around 9:30am.

I show Eric the sights that I visited in 2013: the severely damaged Christ Church Cathedral from the 2011 earthquake, the Spanish Mission-style New Regent Street with its small street cafes, the Bridge of Remembrance, which was not accessible during my previous visit but is now open to the public again, and the Cardboard Cathedral that was built to replace the Christ Church Cathedral. Along the way, we pass one construction site after another, but also dozens of creative street art graffiti. One new attraction for me is the 185 empty white chairs in remembrance of the 185 earthquake victims from 2011. Unfortunately, the memorial is not very prominent, located on a small, rather run-down patch of land on a main road.

We have lunch at the RE:Start Mall. The shopping mall, which was temporarily housed in various shipping containers back then, has noticeably shrunk and now consists of only a few food trucks. Many shop owners have obviously moved back to the newly built or restored shops.

After lunch, we visit the Botanic Gardens again, with its centerpiece being the rose garden. Here, we take a break on a bench in the sun. We missed the blooming season of azaleas and magnolias, but we get to see cute ducklings and trees with enormous trunks.

Next, we stop by the free Canterbury Museum, which introduces visitors to New Zealand's cultural and natural heritage. The Paua House, for example, houses the living room of a couple who decorated their walls with over 1,000 paua shells over the years and collected all sorts of kitschy items. In addition, there are artifacts from the time of Maori settlement, an exhibition about Arctic expeditions, a street from Christchurch's pioneer days, and many other thematic worlds - supposedly, the Canterbury Museum has 2 million exhibits to admire, and if you want to read every information panel, you could easily spend more than half a day here.

Since our energy levels are noticeably declining, we only stay for 1.5 hours and then take a photo stop at the neighboring Christ's College with its historic buildings. What took me 3 days to explore back then, we managed to do in just 3/4 of a day 4 years later.

We return to the hostel at 3:30pm because our feet can't carry us any further. While Eric takes a little nap, I sit down to work on the blog again and realize that despite applying sunscreen with a high SPF, I have slightly burned my face, neck, and shoulders over the course of the day.

The great thing about this hostel is that it hardly has any guests during our stay. So there is no usual rush in the kitchen or bathroom in the evening. A luxury that we shouldn't get used to - after all, it's peak season.