Tuesday, June 16, 2009

Romantic weekend in Christchurch

We spent the weekend in Christchurch to see Hannah's second cousin Dave get married to his partner Jane. It was a beautiful service held in the old Nurses Memorial Chapel.





Catching up with Nick, Jane and Stephen (Dave's brother and parents)

Wrapping up after the wedding

Cutting the cake

Going to the wedding was also a good excuse to include some sightseeing of the south island's cool little city. We stayed in a funky little hotel called Hotel So, which has designer compact rooms and Apple Macs in the foyer.

Hotel So Foyer

Breakfast spot

Cornetto?

Sculptures

Cathedral Square

A reminder of an English university town?


What university town?

Arrogance? Non (except the French won!)

Hanmer Springs is a 2 hour drive away from Christchurch, but has a strong appeal for us hot pool junkies, so we popped over to spend a day chilling out in their warming waters.

Hanmer Springs

We polished off our weekend with a trip to Lyttleton, 15 mins from Christchurch and were pleasantly surprised with what we found.





This is an one of the few remaining timeballs, which was used to
record a precise time at a specific location. Sailors could then
make sure their timepieces were calibrated correctly, and then they
could calculate their longitude accurately when out at sea.

We made our way back to the airport via the hills overlooking
Christchurch, and got spectacular views back across the Canterbury
plains and across to the Southern Alps.


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