New Zeland, Christchurch Part 3

Sheep traffic bollards. Only in New Zealand, or Wales

After our night in Nelson we flew back to Christchurch for a final day before our all too short trip to NZ would be over.

Christchurch turned on the weather for our final full day in the city. It was gloriously sunny and, in truth, a little too hot to be a tourist wandering round town. After catching the bus into the centre our first stop was the Ballantynes department store where Becks used to work.

I bought a couple of top Kiwi Christmas presents for people and we also met a few of the staff who Becks used to work with.

Coming from the UK I was amazed how many staff there were in the store. The accountants have long ago got rid of that many in store staff in the UK!

We'd promised each other that we were going to have souvlaki before we left Christchurch. Possibly not the best choice on a blazing hot day, but this was out last opportunity so we weren't going to swerve from the challenge!

Dimitris is now operating out of a food van in the re:start mall having lost their original shop in the earthquake and it was proving a popular lunchtime spot. Becks was in nostalgic heaven eating the souvlaki. I thought it was pretty good too, but would have loved the lamb to have a little more smoke or spice to really give it a lift. The lamb was excellent considering it had been cooked on a hot plate, but a charcoal BBQ out the back of the van would have been even better.

Lamb souvlaki

After lunch we went for a drift round the eastern part of the city centre. It's an area which feels dislocated from the rest of the city at the moment with many cleared lots or buildings under construction. It was yet another reminder of how much work there is to do in rebuilding the city. Hearteningly you can see that rebuilding is in progress. The rebuilding inevitably takes some time and in the interim there are small splashes of urban art or urban planting in little corners to let you know that little patch hasn't been forgotten.

After we'd finished our stroll round the city centre we walked north to meet Becks' dad Peter for a coffee near his office. On the way I was keen to detour past New Regent St. I have vivid memories of standing in New Regent St on my first trip to New Zealand back in 2001 and wanted to recreate the below photograph. It was lovely to see the street still there and as colourful as I remembered.

New Regent St fourteen years on