Christchurch for Chris´ Birthday!

For Chris´ 27th birthday we decided to rent an apartment in a lovely place called Lyttleton, about half an hour away from Christchurch. We´d been told the restaurants there were some of the best in New Zealand so we were quite excited!

The apartment was great, it had fab views over Lyttleton harbour and across to the mountains beyond. We had had a fun drive there from Christchurch, stopping at Sumner Beach for a walk and admiring the views across to the southern alps.

Once in Lyttelton, we had the difficult decision of where to have Chris´Birthday dinner at! There were so many amazing restaurants to choose from and we would have quite happily eaten at them all! In the end we chose a the very colourful Cafe Volcano. Our meals were so yummy..we made a great choice and had such a fun evening!

We spent about a week in Christchurch and loved it. We spent a day walking around the city which we loved, my favourite part was Sol Square where there are bikes on the walls, colourful graffiti rubbish bins, a Mini car on a wall and some cute little bars. We saw the old tram creeping through the streets and I loved the old colourful Spanish style balcony's on New Regent Street. We walked around the Botanical Gardens, which were a lovely Autumn colour.

We met up with Laura who we had worked with at Highfield, we had dinner with her and then to a great bar with interesting bar stools..as you can see in the photos we enjoyed these a lot!

We also spent time with Stuart, who was leaving for Australia and then home, and his mate Toby..his last night in New Zealand was a very drunken affair of bowling-great fun!

We also went to a rugby game..a must in New Zealand! We watched the Crusaders, the local Christchurch team, beat an Aussie team in the Super 14 competition- we managed to get free tickets after meeting one of the players at dinner one night! It was a great match..very cold though!

We were also taken in and fed up by the Moore family, friends from Sway which we are very grateful to for their kind hospitality!

On our final day we made the 2 hour trip from Christchurch to Akaroa on the Banks Peninsula. The drive their was fantastic with spectacular views of rolling green hills and the gorgeous blue bays ahead of us. Akaroa was a sweet little place to spend a day but a bit too cold to go swimming with the dolphins!