A Day in Christchurch

We finally had a completely free day for exploring Christchurch. Sadly, it was drizzling pretty much all day, but that didn’t stop us from getting to know this beautiful city, still being creatively reimagined after the devastating 2011 earthquake. Everyone is in on the recovery, as evidenced by our tapas lunch with English tea and local beer; whilst (a word we hear a lot) diners conversed in Japanese, Portuguese, and who knows what other languages. Underneath it all, everything seems quintessentially UK, including the weather. That said, we hardly noticed the rain as we toured the nearby Botanical Gardens, with its meandering Avon River, before a most memorable dinner at Fiddlesticks. We were pleasantly suprised to taste local winemakers’ efforts to correct California’s chardonnay mistakes, and look forward to trying more New Zealand whites at home.