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June 02, 2006

Hanmer Springs & Christchurch

Halfway through the kiwi picking season, we got a very welcome ( and rare) 3 days off over the weekend so Tiago and I took off to the South Islands only thermal resort and then the South's biggest city.

Was a truly wonderful weekend though shorter than we would have liked! We drove about 3 1/2 hours to get to Hanmer Springs - so beautiful. It's a small but pretty alpine village with it's main focus being on the large thermal resort in the middle. Not the cheapest place we've ever been to - the accommodation was pretty pricey but it was nice to splash out a bit after living in the bach for so long. We even had a TV - bliss! Was very cold but the sun was shining and it stayed dry so we went to play mini golf (Tiagos favourite, but he always loses) and also did this very cool maze - had to collect clues all the way round it and then pass a water feature without getting wet - Tiago stayed dry, I didn't. Spent the rest of the afternoon in the hot pools at the thermal resort - how I will miss hot pools when I leave here, there is nothing finer. We were staying in a holiday park for the night and had our own self contained unit so after blissing out for a few hours, we got take away curry and then watched movies all night on sky tv in our room! How easily pleased we are but remember we have been deprived of TV entertainment for a while!

Next morning we drove 1 1/2 hours to Christchurch, which is the largest city in the South Island. It's nicknamed the Garden City and is very very pretty as well as being very very english! It has lots of large parks and rivers that you can punt down (one is even called the Avon) as well as taking a ride on the tram (very over-rated). We only had 1 day here before we had to head home for work so we paid for the tram city tour which took us round a very small circuit that we could have easily walked! We did discover the Belgian Beer Cafe whilst on the tram though so double backed for a couple of glasses of Belgians finest! The Cathedral was stunning (from the outside anway, we couldn't go in cos there was a school church service on). The rest of our time here was pretty chilled out - watched another movie, went out for dinner, drank very good red wine! Next morning we went on the Gondola (what us Brits call a cable car). I was very scared. It was very windy and very high and moving about a lot but the views from the top were spectacular. Unfortunately after that, we had to start the long drive back. We wanted to stay 1 more day and drive to Kaikoura to go whale watching but in the end we decied our budget couldn't take it and we should go back to work!

Posted by Trish on June 2, 2006 05:31 AM
Category: New Zealand
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