Wandering around Christchurch, NZ

Our first impression was that Christchurch was much smaller and flatter than Auckland and Wellington. It was obvious walking around town that they are still recovering from their 2011 earthquake (if you recall, Wellington's earthquake was in 2016). The cathedral in the center of town is undergoing a massive restoration. A few months ago members of the church were allowed inside to see the damage for themselves. It was that massive. More on that in a future post, which will talk about the Cardboard Cathedral.

After settling in to our third lodging, we decided to go for a walk to look for a grocery store because this was our first place that did not provide breakfast in the booking fee, but did include a basic kitchen.

The nearest grocery store was outside the city center. We could find convenience stores closer, but not grocery stores. The directions took us to a suburban grocery store cattycorner from a Target. Yes, we spotted the familiar red Target logo from the other side of a major (for Christchurch) four-lane highway. 

After carefully, if not impatiently, crossing the road in two different directions because diagonal would have been a suicide mission, we discovered not a grocery store with housewares, but ... a furniture store.

Yes, we could have bought a kitchen table and chairs, but not yogurt and mueslix.

Before repeating the process to cross diagonally back to where we started, We snapped a picture and sent it to Ashley since she and her friends enjoy shopping in their local Target.  

We passed a stone building that looked like it was being propped up. We later determined it is the Canterbury Museum. In 1990 they decided to add steel beams to protect their building (and the treasures inside) from earthquake damage. I imagine there was a huge fight over the amount of money being spent, but two decades later when an earthquake hit in 2010 and again a year later, there was much rejoicing. It is easy to make up a story to match what you see when there is no one around to verify the facts with. The quiet sidewalks you see in the picture spread to the quiet sidewalks we saw around the CBD (Central Business District). Though we had spring weather, we hardly saw a person.

Some more pictures from town: