We are now on the South Island and yes, it is spectacular. When I get back home, I'll check with Father Michael at St Dominics if skipping mass but driving to Christchurch (on a Sunday) "counts". Honestly, I am not super optimistic on this one.
In the spirit of trying to get credit when I know I don't deserve it, I made a projection that there would be a meltdown by the time Victoria and I rode the ferry out of Wellington. Well, my alma mater Virginia Tech was a 22 point favorite vs Syracuse, yet they kicked off, played, and lost while we were on the ferry. I'm counting that as a meltdown.
Victoria, on the other hand, had a blast. We met a dad (Mark) and his daughter (Caro) downstairs at breakfast at our hotel. They were moving from suburban Wellington to Nelson on the South Island. A big selling point was the better weather. We chatted, figured out our girls were born two days apart, figured out we were on the same ferry, and kept an eye out for each other. We found each other and the girls had a blast all 3.5 hours on the ferry. Nice story around Caro's name, they had friends and family with names like Carol, Caroline, and so on, so they named her Caro "after" a few of them. More presents, more happy family members, and names that end in "o" work down here.
In other news, Mark told me who from the Lord of the Rings lives around the city and pointed to sites where some of the movies were filmed. Yep. Australia has salt water crocodiles that can eat you, man-eating sharks, snakes with enough poison to kill an entire rugby team with one bite, jellyfish that can kill you, aggressive backyard spiders that can kill you, fish that look like rocks and (all together now) can kill you. New Zealand has no crocs and nothing with any poison anywhere on the whole island. But they have Hobbits and Orcs everywhere.
It is a beautiful ride out of Wellington, across the straight, and up the sound into Picton. Rather than explaining that statement, I'll just post a few shots:
After lots of good socializing, Victoria fell asleep maybe 10 minutes into the drive. Instead of stopping for lunch or at one of many Marlborough wineries, we just rolled south. It was beautiful - rolling hills, snow-capped peaks nearby, and then the road popped out onto the Pacific coast. Also, this strange bright orb appeared in the sky from about halfway across the straights through sunset. It's easy to like a warm (or at least warmer) sunny day.
Having driven for about four hours, some of it behind slow-moving trucks, we saw a winery and pulled in. It was pretty good with a peppery Pinot Noir that I picked up. The smile on Victoria's face is not based on the wine - I promised to play the Frozen soundtrack (yet again) all the way into Christchurch.
So we got into Christchurch. On the drive in, we saw a sign promoting the world's biggest gun shop in a strip mall outside of town. Maybe it's the largest measured in square meters. I am still confused. Anyhow, there were some really beautiful buildings - schools and churches done in Ye Olde English way. The hotel looks like a garden with a small hotel business on the side and it is next to a beautiful park. We got in early enough to go into town for dinner, so I figured that was my plan. Let me preface this with a clear statement that evaluating a city on a Sunday evening is not fair. This tower on Victoria Street (photographed out the window on the a red light) was emblematic of an entire city of quaint, beautiful, English architecture.
Still, much of the downtown is a scene of devastation. On February 22, 2011, an earthquake (6.3) with an epicenter just 10 km from Christchurch's downtown killed 185. Driving around the central business district, it's clearly still an issue. Several buildings - from the mundane (like a pizza shop) to the noteworthy (like an administrative building that appears to date back to the 1800s) - are marked in one way or another. Some are just fenced in and clearly out of business. Some have metal braces holding them up. One had a 3-story stack of containers reinforcing its north wall - seriously, the containers you see on ships coming from China heading for the Port of Oakland. From traffic partitions to boarded up buildings to construction sites, much of it could be confused for an aggressive urban renewal program if you were unaware of the history. From what is there, it is clear that this was an amazing downtown and it is heartbreaking to realize how much was lost and see how much was damaged.
Next up - we've got a few options for the morning. After that, it's off to Queenstown, the gateway to the New Zealand Alps and Fjords.
In the spirit of trying to get credit when I know I don't deserve it, I made a projection that there would be a meltdown by the time Victoria and I rode the ferry out of Wellington. Well, my alma mater Virginia Tech was a 22 point favorite vs Syracuse, yet they kicked off, played, and lost while we were on the ferry. I'm counting that as a meltdown.
Victoria, on the other hand, had a blast. We met a dad (Mark) and his daughter (Caro) downstairs at breakfast at our hotel. They were moving from suburban Wellington to Nelson on the South Island. A big selling point was the better weather. We chatted, figured out our girls were born two days apart, figured out we were on the same ferry, and kept an eye out for each other. We found each other and the girls had a blast all 3.5 hours on the ferry. Nice story around Caro's name, they had friends and family with names like Carol, Caroline, and so on, so they named her Caro "after" a few of them. More presents, more happy family members, and names that end in "o" work down here.
In other news, Mark told me who from the Lord of the Rings lives around the city and pointed to sites where some of the movies were filmed. Yep. Australia has salt water crocodiles that can eat you, man-eating sharks, snakes with enough poison to kill an entire rugby team with one bite, jellyfish that can kill you, aggressive backyard spiders that can kill you, fish that look like rocks and (all together now) can kill you. New Zealand has no crocs and nothing with any poison anywhere on the whole island. But they have Hobbits and Orcs everywhere.
After lots of good socializing, Victoria fell asleep maybe 10 minutes into the drive. Instead of stopping for lunch or at one of many Marlborough wineries, we just rolled south. It was beautiful - rolling hills, snow-capped peaks nearby, and then the road popped out onto the Pacific coast. Also, this strange bright orb appeared in the sky from about halfway across the straights through sunset. It's easy to like a warm (or at least warmer) sunny day.
Having driven for about four hours, some of it behind slow-moving trucks, we saw a winery and pulled in. It was pretty good with a peppery Pinot Noir that I picked up. The smile on Victoria's face is not based on the wine - I promised to play the Frozen soundtrack (yet again) all the way into Christchurch.
So we got into Christchurch. On the drive in, we saw a sign promoting the world's biggest gun shop in a strip mall outside of town. Maybe it's the largest measured in square meters. I am still confused. Anyhow, there were some really beautiful buildings - schools and churches done in Ye Olde English way. The hotel looks like a garden with a small hotel business on the side and it is next to a beautiful park. We got in early enough to go into town for dinner, so I figured that was my plan. Let me preface this with a clear statement that evaluating a city on a Sunday evening is not fair. This tower on Victoria Street (photographed out the window on the a red light) was emblematic of an entire city of quaint, beautiful, English architecture.
Still, much of the downtown is a scene of devastation. On February 22, 2011, an earthquake (6.3) with an epicenter just 10 km from Christchurch's downtown killed 185. Driving around the central business district, it's clearly still an issue. Several buildings - from the mundane (like a pizza shop) to the noteworthy (like an administrative building that appears to date back to the 1800s) - are marked in one way or another. Some are just fenced in and clearly out of business. Some have metal braces holding them up. One had a 3-story stack of containers reinforcing its north wall - seriously, the containers you see on ships coming from China heading for the Port of Oakland. From traffic partitions to boarded up buildings to construction sites, much of it could be confused for an aggressive urban renewal program if you were unaware of the history. From what is there, it is clear that this was an amazing downtown and it is heartbreaking to realize how much was lost and see how much was damaged.
Next up - we've got a few options for the morning. After that, it's off to Queenstown, the gateway to the New Zealand Alps and Fjords.
1 comment:
Love reading the updates. And this was an excellent article on Christchurch and the earthquake... http://www.espn.com/espn/feature/story/_/id/12284298/icc-cricket-world-cup-revitalizes-christchurch-new-zealand-2011-earthquake
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