New Zealand Day 1: Christchurch (3/22/08)

After leaving from the Sydney airport, we arrived in New Zealand around midnight and finally made it to our hostel (side note, people sleep in the airport; we should have done that to save some money!). The hostel that we stayed in was very nice but we only booked enough beds for 6 people…and we had 12. So the room which I stayed in which should have had only 2 people in it ended up with 5. We simply pushed the beds together and had 3 people sleep there and two on the floor

When we woke up we headed down to the city of Christchurch exploring the markets, fudge factory and other places that give free samples to munch on (clearly we’re poor college students). Following our bumming around, we visited the Botanical Gardens of Christchurch which were beautiful. We probably spent a good 2 hours there looking at all of the flowers, playing in the giant trees and gathering around the World Peace Bell. Beneath the World Peace Bell there were was the word PEACE written in different languages, including Sign Language. Holler at World Peace.

Once we had enough of the Gardens we headed over to the center of the city, the Cathedral. The Cathedral is over 150 years old and absolutely beautiful. I will write more about the it later, as I spent more time there on another day, but I do have one thing to point out. On several of the murals on the wall, there were hundreds of Swastikas, and I am a little confused as to their meaning. I thought that the symbol was Native American in origin, but I see that I am probably wrong. If anybody knows, please enlighten me.

For dinner that night the 12 of us went to an Asian restaurant which allowed us to have our own room. We sat at a large circular table that had a rotating circular plate in the middle. To pass the time we set a camera up on the plate, pressed the self timer and spun to camera around to see who it would land on – a great way to pass the time.

Then it was time to try out New Zealand’s night life. Somehow during the night the girls in the group ended up at a bar that was having a private 21^st birthday party for some guy named Jonno. When we were up there we found the birthday boy who insisted that we all take a tequila shot with him – who were we to say no? The party was fun, but it was winding down and towards the end it was just us and a couple of his friends (he had disappeared). We finally left to go back to the hostel to get some rest for our big trip.