More English than England
Trip Start
Sep 13, 2006
1
58
85
Trip End
May 25, 2007
Christchurch,
New Zealand
Monday, March 26, 2007
We relaxed for the rest of the day and the next day we headed into the city. Christchurch is a very "British" city and small enough to easily walk through even though it is the largest city on the South Island. With only 4 million people in the country and 1.3 million of them in Auckland, even the "big" cities are very small.
We visited the Christchurch cathedral (Anglican, of course), took the tourist trolley around the town and visited the botanical gardens. Mom went crazy over the roses. We also did the very British activity of "Punting in the Park". I have never heard of punting outside of football but it is similar to riding gondolas. You sit in a long skinny boat and a guy stands in the rear and pushes you along with a pole. It is quite relaxing and you get to interact with the many ducks who share the river with the boats.
Many of the activities we did here, in fact, many of the activities we did in New Zealand, would have been out of our budget. But Mom and Dad wanted wanted to do them so they would take us along. And like our time with Mom and Carolyn in Italy, we ate more and at better restaurants than when we are alone!
We discovered the pretty Green-Lipped Mussel here, a breed of mussel that only grown off New Zealand's coast. They are delicious! It is too bad we can't bring a few back to Manaco Beach and have Uncle Louie seed the beach with them. They could be the new seafood sensation in the states. A New Zealand seafood mystery we have to solve is with the scallops. Their scallops have these big orange kidney-shaped things hanging off the white piece that we call "scallop" in the states. Is this just an trait of NZ scallops only or do we cut them off in the states? They taste good enough. It seems like a shame for us to waste them. Maybe they use them in cat treats or something. We will have to investigate.
We did our first trip to the supermarket which dad felt had to be recorded with a photo. Most of the products were similar to Australia but they had a few of their own. Some things in the supermarket strike us as funny. Party favors are called "haberdashery". Dog food is in the refrigerated meat section, in big plastic rolls like our bulk hamburger in the states. This is the same in Australia. Some have a picture of a dog and others don't. We speculated if the cashiers make sure non-English speaking customers have dogs when they see them buying it. They could just think they were getting a good deal on meat. It is good that they keep it separate from the human meat in the States.
The next day on our way out of town we did a visit to the Antarctic Centre. Due to its proximity to Antarctica, New Zealand has lots of flights and projects down there. The center was quite interesting. We learned a lot about the cold continent and even got to experience an arctic storm in a special room. Brrrr. Also on site was a center for Blue Penguins. These are the same penguins we saw in Australia but there they were called Fairy Penguins. The penguins here at the Antarctic center were all disabled in some way. One was blind, a few were paralyzed so they kept swimming in circles. Others had broken flippers, etc. They were very cute and we were able to watch them feed on dead fish.
After this we were on the road to Omaru, where even more penguin delights awaited us.
