Road Trip, Day 4 - Easter Monday

7:30 a.m: The B&B chimed a series of sing-song bells and announced that breakfast was served. Apparently this building used to be a frat house and they used the bells to get their frat boys out of bed or to declare Lights Out. Personally, I would have preferred to sleep longer (of course) and skip breakfast, but once the bells woke me up, I figured I might as well partake of their fine food. They offered the usual hot brekkies plus a few unusual breakfast menu items such as creamed corn, baked beans or spaghetti. I'd never heard of baked beans for breakfast before I moved to NZ, but evidently beans on toast is standard fare. No thanks. We never did understand about serving spaghetti for breakfast, and don't know if it was served with marinara sauce, or if it was just noodles. We mainly stuck with the traditional eggs or bacon-type selections. Miss Winnie, the tubby resident dachshund particularly liked the lamb sausage; Erica didn't.

Today we mostly wandered around Christchurch: the park, 2 museums, and the main square.
1. In the park, we saw a man punting on the Avon River (a punt is a flat-bottomed boat). The punter wore a fancy waistcoat and a jaunty straw hat and pushed the boat along with a long pole, just like in Cambridge, England. In fact, Christchurch is reminiscent of a proper British city with its cathedral, formal garden, cloisters, and Christ College. Conversely, the accent in Christchurch is LESS British than in Auckland. The people here on the South Island over-pronounce the letter R according to the North Islanders. In Auckland (and in England) they say purple as "puh-ple," and they find it humorous that the hicks on the South Islanders pronounce it "pur-ple." Of course, I say "pur-ple" too so it sounds pur-fectly fine to me.

2. We went to Christchurch's art museum (of course) and were pleasantly impressed with their collection. There was some weirdo modern art at the beginning, but lovely New Zealand and international art further on. Plus, the museum cafe had good coffee (for Curt, Nolan, and Erica) and a muffin for me (chocolate of course). After the museum, we headed toward Cathedral Square, the town centre, and stopped to buy some shoes for the Shoeless One! Yipee! We also had to get a new journal for me, since I was on the last page. I've always kept a journal during vacations, but for the last 1.5 years since we moved to NZ I have kept it up every day because let's face it, living here is like being on a never-ending vacation! Every day is full of new things to explore and learn, and that's why we like it.

3. In Cathedral Square there were a dozen spectators watching a giant chess game, in addition to a handful of smaller, regular-sized chess games. I think it's a pretty cool initiative to offer chess to the public in the town centre. The 2 men who were playing weren't your stereotypical chess players, either; they had numerous tattoos, multiple piercings, baggy saggy pants, and hoodie up the whole time. I'm not exactly sure what a stereotypical chess player would look like, they these guys looked more like stereotypical unemployed druggies.

4. The day wasn't over yet so we decided to go to the Canterbury museum which also turned out to be better than we expected. Erica especially liked the display of bugs. Nolan liked the stuffed NZ birds because you could push a button and hear their birdcall. He always liked pushing buttons. I liked the Antarctic exhibit. Most of all, Nolan liked the weta. He'd been wanting to see a weta ever since he arrived. It's a wood-eating bug about as big as a cockroach, and it's really gross and disgusting-looking. It became "famous" when NZ's Weta Workshop (named after the bug) won a bunch of Oscars for special effects for The Lord of the Rings movies. So Nolan's been dying to see a real weta. Ick.

5. That night, we went out to dinner and had an excellent chocolate decadent dessert (of course). After dinner, we went back to the B & B for another game of Hearts. Nolan and Erica were tired of losing to Curt so they ganged up on him (and won).

Overall, we had to admit that we liked Christchurch immensely. I remember when Curt and I were first immigrating to New Zealand, we didn't think we wanted to live in Christchurch because it was too small, too far out in the wop-wops, too provincial, too far south, or too cold. We were wrong (of course). It turns out it would have been a great place to live.

Plus, Christchurch is a magnificent word: Chch is the accepted abbreviation for Christchurch, since it begins and ends with ch. Actually, there's another ch in the middle! I seriously can't think of any other words that have ch 3 times. Now, THAT's a fantastic word.