2/1 – Christchurch, New Zealand

It’s not a pretty a day today as we arrive in port. Sort of overcast, chilly and looks like rain maybe. Oh well, we’re due. Especially considering the storms that have been ravaging these islands lately. We arrive in port early today and are excited to get off early too, but for some unknown reason it takes forever to get clearance. We end up standing around the gangway for almost an hour before finally being released. Bummer.

We had the same dilemma today with the shuttle vs. the public bus. In the end we decided upon shuttle, knowing that the public bus schedule is not very frequent, only 1 per hour and knowing it would be jam packed coming back in the afternoon. So, expensive shuttle it is – it is just too convenient, regardless of the price. As a little justification for paying the extra price, as we were comfortably riding out on our shuttle, we saw 10 or so cruise passengers standing at the public bus stop waiting. Yep. Sometimes it makes sense to do it the easy way!

We are excited to finally be back visiting Christchurch today. We were last here, on town, in 2007 way before the devastating earthquakes of 2010 and 2011. And then, almost 10 years ago to the day (January 31, 2013 to be exact) we were in Akaroa which is just down the coast, but couldn’t come into town because all of Christchurch was still shut down due to those earthquakes. It will be so interesting to see the changes and what is going on now, some 12 years later.

Our first stop, is, you guessed it, the Botanic garden. Ok, so, it is still really early – not even 9am – and the Christchurch Quake City exhibit doesn’t open until 10. So what else could we do besides continue our Down Under Botanical Garden tour! What the heck. It’s great exercise. The Gardens have all been beautiful and why not? And these Gardens do not disappoint. Sprawling out in the Avon river basin, the gardens are a mix of vibrant blooming flowers, incredibly huge and odd trees as well as ducks and riverfront scenes that are downright idyllic.

There is also the New Zealand World Peace Bell gifted to the country for its longstanding commitment to peace. The bell is a symbol, or hope really, for worldwide peace and nuclear disarmament. The flowers around the base are native plants from Japan, including a camphor propagated from a tree that survived the atomic bombing of Nagasaki. Christchurch has always had a rich peace heritage and a strong anti-nuclear movement, making it the first nuclear-free city in New Zealand in 1992. Thus, the gifting of the peace bell.

Next to the Bell are lovely zinnias and a wonderful rose garden, still very much in bloom. It is lovely to walk through all these flowering plants so late in the season (it is going on Fall here) and makes for a very pleasant morning. From the rose garden we spy the Garden café where we stop off for the restrooms, as well as a cappuccino and a flat white. We just figured out what flat whites are, and have decided to try them as they don’t have as much froth or whipped cream at the top and are supposed to have more espresso. The comparison is favorable – so we think we will now switch! And both coffees go quite well with the cream filled puff donut to which we succumbed.

Back in the gardens, we traverse through the rose garden again, heading to the New Zealand plant area which is a mass of ferns and huge trees and draping plants and this weird flowering fern-like thing (again, will let your imagination tell you what it looks like!). While it looks so peaceful and serene, it is actually incredibly noisy in here! The insects – whether cicadas or whatever – are almost deafening. So much so, we just had to take videos so you could hear it also.

Out of the deafening racket, we circle the water garden, past the massive fig tree or whatever it is, eventually coming out of the park by following the Avon river into town.

From the Gardens it is an easy walk to the Christchurch Quake City exhibit, which had just opened. There weren’t all that many people in the place when we arrived, and the gal at the front said we it was good we came when we did as it gets so much busier later. So, off we go into the world of the two earthquakes. The exhibit is done quite well (with a couple caveats we’ll mention below). The exhibits explain exactly what happened in both quakes and chronicled the devastation as well as the resilience and rebuilding. Which is still going on today, 12 years later, amazingly enough.

Some of the more interesting displays talk about how the earthquakes destroyed so many chimneys and fireplaces on these old houses. And how to replace them in the original form was simply not the best option with earthquakes so frequent. A couple of builders got together and developed what they called “heritage” chimneys that weighed far less than the original brick chimneys but looked the same.

Another display had beer bottles called “After Shock” that was actually a beer created on the morning of the 2010 quake. The power went out and in the process the beers became stronger because of the reduction of water used. The brewer salvaged the batch, which had 7.1% alcohol, the magnitude of the major quake that hit that day!

So some lightheartedness was incorporated, but mostly it was just sad. There were also photos of the devastation, and the church spire that had broken off and twisted and all sorts of examples of the damage. The most poignant thing was a video that told the story off the earthquake through 16 survivors’ eyes. These survivors were interviewed fairly soon after the quake, then again 10 years later or their perspective after time had passed. This was truly gut wrenching at times, but also happy and good stories for some.

Here unfortunately is the caveat with the exhibit. The videos were way too long in the format shown. Each survivor talked for a good 5 to 8 minutes or more, making the entire film incredibly long. That would be fine if it were shown in a large auditorium, but the exhibit center is fairly small, with a one-way tour design that does make the most of the space, but leaves little room for a theater or viewing space. The video ends up bottle-necking the tour and most people stop there, crowding in or blocking the way. Plus sitting there for the entire thing gets a bit much after a while. If there was anything to change about that exhibit, it would be the video presentation. Maybe break it up into 4 different videos in different locations (something the small space just won’t allow now). At any rate, we sat and watch a lot of them and I’ll repeat, gut wrenching but also happy in some areas.

The whole experience was sad but uplifting.

Turns out, as we had been sitting watching the videos, the exhibit had been filling up. We noticed a lot more people wandering through as we were watching, but when we left the building, they were actually lined up outside! The docent was right – get there early or you have to wait on line to visit. Early bird gets the worm!

Afterward, we wandered around town looking for lunch. A lot of the places we saw online weren’t open yet, or were relatively far away. So we headed toward the river and the River Market which started out as the container mall after the quake. They hauled in containers and made them into restaurants and stores. As time went on, they expanded and now it is a regular mall-type place with stores and the original food market – and it doesn’t resemble a shipping container any longer. Not a trace could be found as far as we were concerned.

Inside the main area there are a ton of food stalls – but they are just so hard to eat at with very little table space and so many people milling around. We finally ended up at the Kaiser Brew Garden that was upstairs in the market. It was a great place, with an outdoor section that had an atrium like ceiling but was open air with huge windows and tons and tons of plants. A perfect place to rest a bit, have some great drinks and share a chorizo and kaiser sausage pizza. So good! Being as this was a beer garden, we figured it would be a pub type situation and we would pay when we ordered at the bar. But they have waitresses, and they just take your card and hold it for you, giving you this awesome heavy copper metal card with the cutest saying on it! Yep, too many steins!!!

Lunch handled, we went back out walking the streets, past the Bridge of Remembrance and onto the original cathedral which is still being rebuilt. The timeline has an anticipated completion date at the end of 2027. Wow! They hope to just get the whole thing restabilized this month. Incredible.

Making our way to the “transitional” cathedral, we passed some great street art and also the old tram station where they have a restaurant tram (only open for dinner). A few blocks later we were standing across form the transitional cathedral, which is built from cardboard. Seriously! Cardboard and wood and plexiglass (or something like that) roof! Crazy, but they could build it fast.

On our way back toward the center of town, we pass more excellent street art, including a set of stairs that were obviously left from some structure destroyed in the earthquake, and a fabulous old colonial style building, right up against a newer building that is still undergoing earthquake repairs. Then we find a pub for a drink and the bar manager is from Thailand! So you know we had a long chat and loved that.

We wanted to go to the the CTV memorial park, the location of the CTV building where 115 people died when the it collapsed, but didn’t have any luck finding it. While we were quenching our thirst, we did some quick Google research, and lo and behold, the memorial park is less than a block from the transitional church – where we had just been. Okie dokie, more walking in our future! Back toward the church we go, easily finding the memorial which has the original tile entry floor still in place – as are 3 parking spaces with CTV stamped on Them. Poignant.

One last stop – at the earthquake memorial along the river – which is near the shuttle bus stop. On the way though, we pass a piece of the Berlin wall . As in Berlin, Christchurch artists continually refresh the paintings to keep up with the political and cultural sentiment of the moment. We finally reach the earthquake memorial, which is very lovely and peaceful a pretty little stretch of the river.