Christchurch, New Zealand

On to the South Island of New Zealand to the town of Christchurch, which is New Zealand’s third largest city (it has about 300,000 residents).  Christchurch was a Church of England settlement, whose founders intended for it to have the best features of English society.  They must have succeeded, because Christchurch is known as the most English city outside of England.   Its nickname is “the Garden City.”  Cathedral Square is the focal point of the town, with an impressive and beautiful gothic cathedral on one end.  The town also has this fabulous river, the Avon River, which meanders through town and also the botanical gardens.  The river has grassy banks on both sides and people were hanging out in the grass along the river all throughout town.  It was so picturesque!   We saw lots of baby ducks in the river, since it is spring here (which is still hard to wrap my mind around).  The botanical gardens were gorgeous (again, probably because it was spring!), made even more so with the river running through it.  We had nice sunny weather the day we were here, which is probably why we enjoyed the city so much.  That plus the beer tasting we did!  :)

On September 4^th of this year, there was a 7.1 earthquake 25 miles west of Christchurch.  It happened at 4:35 in the morning.  Only one person died (from a heart attack), and two people were injured from falling debris.  Other than that, no one was seriously hurt.  The quake caused $2 million in damages.  Daron and I did see quite a bit of construction (probably re-construction) as we wandered around town.  Nothing too major though.  If I hadn’t been told about the earthquake, I wouldn’t have been able to tell that the town had been through such a major one. 

At the port of Lyttelton where we docked there was a time ball station on the hill.  Time ball stations used to be very important for ships, as having the exact time allowed them to check their chronometers and determine longitude.  Nowadays with GPS they aren’t used anymore.  The timeball would be dropped at exactly 1pm each day. This is where the saying “keep your eye on the ball” originated.  How's that for an interesting piece of trivia!