17th November 2009

Today we arrived in the port of Lyttleton which is the port for Christchurch, the largest city in the South Island. With a population of 324,300 it is often described as the most English city outside England, known for its parks, gardens, treelined avenues and gracious 19th century stone architecture. Our 30 minutes journey on what turned out to be a very pleasantly warm day took us through a tunnel cut through the hillside.

On arriving in the city centre, known as Cathedral Square, we decided to do a walk following a printed guide from the local information centre. (All the stops into the various cities drop you outside the information centre). This walk timed at 45 minutes if we didn't stop took us close to 31/2 hours. One of the marked stops was at the statue of Robert Falcon Scott which had been sculpted by his widow. It was very impressive and Rosalyn thought it looked a lot like John Mills (played Scott in Scott of the Antarctic for the uninitiated)! We then stopped to watch people punting on the River Avon which looked like fun. After various other stops we arrived at the Botanic Gardens which are absolutely glorious even though it is still quite early in the season for a lot of the flowers. They even had a small Victory Garden which had been started during World War II where they had planted, potatoes, leeks, lettuces, etc. Following on from this we went into the Canterbury Museum which was rather impressive. There are lots of different galleries, which range from dinosaurs to an Egyptian mummy, but the star of the show as far as I was concerned was the Antarctic gallery. I understand there is another museum in Christchurch completely devoted to Antarctica, but this, although on a smaller scale, was very well done. There were a number of vehicles that had been to the South Pole on show including a Ferguson tractor -modified for the conditions of course as well as facimilies of Scott's diary.

We had intended at this point to go on and complete the 2nd walk (3 in all which formed a huge circle round the city area) but we were both tiring so we walked back into the city square where we watched a busker doing some tricks. There was a market so we had a look around but even here the merino wool jumpers are ridiculously expensive. We have decided that NZ is not cheap and it is not solely down to the poor rate of exchange.

We both liked what little we have seen of Christchurch and hope to be able to come back and really explore the area. Very tired we returned to the ship to have a little sleep ready to face the evening fun and also with the realisation that our holiday is very nearly at its end. We have one more stop in NZ at Wellington before we cruise back to Australia and Sydney for one night and then home.