On Sunday morning, we headed for Christchurch, the biggest city on the South Island. Our plan was to get to the city in time for church at one of the ward buildings.
As luck would have it--I seriously can't believe that it happens so often--but it happened to be the weekend of Stake Conference which meant they had no Sacrament meeting. We only figured it out as we drove by the original meeting house and found the empty parking lot...super disappointing. So we then drove to another church building closer to the center of Christchurch (and our hotel) and discovered that indeed, it was a stake conference Sunday. We managed to get bits and pieces of the talks in the second hour and an amazing brightly dressed choir performance:).
We did get a picture with the missionaries after the meeting!
After checking into the hotel, Crown Plaza, we walked over to the central part of the city. I say city, but it felt quite small to us. Christchurch suffered from a terrible earthquake in 2011, of 6.3 magnitude. From what people told us, a lot of the central part of town was utterly destroyed and some is still under repairs. People talk about that tragedy with somberness, it really left a huge impact on the lives of the locals.
We walked to downtown and after some wandering around hopped on the hop on hop off trolley to take a tour around town. We pretty much only hopped on and ended up not hopping off:). It was quite expensive.
The kids just welcomed a rest time again after walking around looking for lunch. Mark looks like he is so happy to be in New Zealand.
Oh look, that's us at the aforementioned lunch! We went to this huge food hall that had all sorts of food available! I really liked this set up! Everyone picked what they wanted and we just ate together.
Christchurch didn't take that long to explore on the surface level, so we drove to the disc golf course that Robert had been eyeing for days.
All was fun and all until they lost a disc and spent literally 30 minutes looking for it! hahaha Robert found a hedgehog instead! Who knew they had hedgehogs here??? Until I showed up to help them look and found it!
Alex with his amazing one handed throw.
After this little activity, we drove a little further towards the coast, parked in the closest public parking lot we could find to just go walk around on the beach to see the ocean!
It was so vast! So pretty!
Golden hour was fast approaching, so we took a bunch of pictures of those who actually wanted to get their pictures taken.
Oh, we had so much fun doing our traditional beach jumping picture! NZ 2024!
Great job, Robert, for being such a good sport and jumping with the kids!
And making us all laugh!
Wait, they are not quite finished yet! This was hilarious!
Christchurch beach selfie!
Please accept my apologies for not editing this picture, but now I don't know how to do it when it's already on my blog.
I know it looks super dark but it was not even super late. Alex had a wonderful talk with me, he just wanted to chill and not take pictures.
Then we headed to downtown again for dinner!
We had some amazing burger/sandwiches at a locally owned cafe.
Going out to eat is still one of our kids' favorite activity when traveling!
I believe we snapped this candid picture because we were impressed with finally having free water available as self-served, you took care of your own cups and hoped that others put their dirty ones away.
And then we found the cutest gelato place that was absolutely hopping! But we found a cozy spot to enjoy our dessert and chat. It was sooo fun!
Katya was on search of a kiwi for days now... so every chance she got she pointed out kiwis. We weren't giving up yet on seeing an actual live kiwi bird.
And that was it for our Christchurch adventures! Early in the morning, we dropped off our favorite Staria at the airport and headed for the North Island!
It was super cool (for us) but because I matched my Delta status with United, I was able to get me and a guest a lounge pass to get some breakfast! It does change your travel experience quite a bit when you can enjoy these small perks along the way!
To Be Continued....
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