Flowers and Bed Bugs

Trip Start Jul 24, 2007
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Trip End Nov 11, 2007


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Sunday, October 28, 2007

Been in Christchurch since Friday - its a pretty city spent Saturday wandering round the markets at the Arts Centre and in Cathedral Square before headin down to the Botanically Gardens and the Free Museum there. I enjoyed wandering through the gardens - I wouldn't say that they are fantastic because they really aren't but sometimes it just nice to wander round and watch what other people are up to, take pictures and just enjoy a sunny day. The Museum was great as well - full of all different things and I spent a couple of hours ambling through there -best of all entry was free so even it had been rubbish it wouldn't have mattered.

I also stumbled upon Christchurch's art gallery which was also free - there was some interesting bits and pieces in there including a photography exhibition by a dutch lady called
Ans Westra who done lots of study's of the Maori way of life right from the 1960s through to today - none of her Maori pictures really grabbed me but she has also been pretty active in recording political and social actions such as demonstrations and she had some pretty interesting photographs of the anti springbok protest which I think was in 1980 anyway some of her work was pretty moving and some of it was rubbish -same with the art collections - I'm not a fan of much of this contemporary art, you know the stuff where they throw paint at a wall and call it a masterpiece or hang a piece of metal from a piece of wire and shudder in awe at the shadow it casts on the wall or best of all where they get a duvet, tie dye it and staple it to the wall with wire supports and give it loads of awards - what happening to the art world?! River Avon
River Avon
 ! I don't like all the older stuff either but at least people could actually paint then and I can appreciate their skill even if what they have painted is not to my taste!

So had a pretty cheap day yesterday doing all the free stuff, today I was quite excited because I was going to the Antarctic Centre - NZ along with numerous countries round the world have research centres in Antarctica but with NZ being so close in relative terms everything is based here. There are so many advertisements and stuff for it I thought it was gonna be great but it was soo rubbish - it wasn't that expensive thankfully otherwise I would have been playing up but it took me less than half an hour to read everything in the place and watch the two documentaries they show! The only good thing about it is that the rescue blue penguins and have a penguin enclosure where they look after them- when I say rescue - they help rehabilitate penguins which have been injured or maimed by dogs which happens a lot when they come on the beach or hit by cars etc and those which can't be released they keep at the centre and they currently have some breeding pairs, they also have a blind penguin called Elvis who doesn't go in the water cos she's blind and an anorexic penguin called JoJo who they have to force fed because she refuses to eat!!

Oh yeah and the bloody dorm I've been in has got bed bugs!! so spent the rest of my afternoon boil washing all my clothes and spraying my bags - I'm covered in bites on my hands and lower arms, chest and some on my face so right now I'm pretty itchy!! - Nice ending to my trip!!
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