A Quick Peek of main city of southern NZ: Christchurch

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My 2 travel mates and I flew from Auckland to Christchurch on the evening of Dec 7 to Christchurch and began our 10-day trip in NZ. We planned to make to do Southern of NZ and all the way up to the North. Understood it's kinda rushing to make the trip this way in 10 'magical' days but it all went rather smoothly that we had a blast in NZ!! Woo-hoo..* In Christchurch, we booked a night's stay at one of the BBH hostel - Foley Towers located at Kilmore Street. One thing I'd noticed was that NZ hostels expect travellers to check out as early as 10am although 12pm is knowingly the standard check-out time in practice worldwide. I dunno...probably not in general. Anyway, since we arrived late around 10.30pm that we woke up the next morning having being 'chased' out of the room. Haha, oh well, I have kinda exaggerated here and what I really meant was the housekeeping starts at 10am sharp which also means we were expected to leave soon! I had to ensure the lady in duty that we would be fast to our packings to embark on our first tour around the town on our own, although we pretty much not very sure what to do. Main reason of stopping at Christchurch was because we wanted to retrieve our rented Toyota Corolla from EzyRental. People who did backpacking style would probably be familiar with this rental car service available in NZ, which made the whole journey much more convenient as we got to stop at just about anywhere whenever we felt like to. 😊

We were very hungry by the time as we walked and decided to stop at Subway, one of the most found fast food outlet in NZ, for a quick breakfast. Cathedral Christchurch, known as the 'heart and soul of the city', is a great historical building, located at a nice park to hang around especially on (lazy and relaxing) summer. However, part of this building was under construction when we were there to cater a corner for an opening cafe. Sounds abit ridiculous to me though. Probably due the reasons I came from Malaysia - known for its year-round hot, hot, humid and humid country, it seemed to me that summer in NZ is not exactly summer but more of semi-winter. It was soooo~ cold!😱 I'd probably freezed when the soft and gentle breeze brushed onto my face. In this area, other than the Cathedral as main attraction, there is a big chess set for its people and a few gazebos selling souvenirs. Upon our arrival, we witnessed the exhibition of antique cars driven by a bunch of Dutch couples- who termed their voyage as 'Kiwi Trial', just outside the Cathedral.

We saw a great pour of tourists every now and then in Christchurch, mainly by judging on the people with cameras trying to snap pictures of every nook and corner, be it of the Christchurch Cathedral, the city area or from the Christchurch Tramway. We had agreed with EzyRental's guy that we would meet up at the square for a lift to their centre to collect our car. Hmm....I bet we have missed quite alot from this amazing city as I read further of the previous journal entries or just any sites on the net, about this cultural precinct of southern NZ. 😞 I might think of making up for it next time around, who knows!

With the car then, next stop shall be the breathtaking and pristine Mount Cook! 😊

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