New Zealand is the country where we are spending most time, 4 weeks in total, split 50:50 between North and South Islands. We are in the South Island to start with 2 night (1.5 days) in the South Island largest city and NZ oldest city - Christchurch.
Despite being the largest city on the South Island Christchurch is fairly small, no bigger than Oxford or Cambridge in the UK but with probably less to see and do - so 2 nights turned out to be a good period of time to spend here.
We took a guided tour around the city and were please we did as we would not have seen most of the site of interest wondering round our selves. Christchurch is known as the most English city within NZ and our guide seemed very please that he had 2 "real" English people in his group and was really nice to us. The Oz couple in the group took all the flak for being of criminal background, it turns out that to come to NZ in the early days you had to be of good Christian character and have a letter from your minster to confirm this, the Kiwi's like to remind the Oz of this on a regular basis. This suited me fine as NZ had just beaten England in the cricket and I was happy not to have to take any ribbing on that topic.......
Other than the tour, we took a punt along the river (this was the only thing that really reminded me of England) which was very relaxing in the sun. The evenings were spent in the restaurant and bars around the town centre, which despite its small size still had a good feel about them, plus the beer is much better here than in Oz - Australia has a lot to learn about making good beer.
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