Life in Christchurch

We have posted so many stories and pictures about our travels that we have mentioned little about Christchurch, our home base for these 9 weeks or so.

CC is the second largest city in NZ, with a population of about 350,000.  It is known as the "City of Gardens" because of its large Botanic Garden, many large public green spaces, and the locals' love of gardening around their homes.  Nearly everyone has some size and type of garden where the live, and they love to show them off.  Right now at the end of summer they are reaping the fruits of their "veg" gardens with home-grown herbs and produce everywhere.

CC is also a college town, with the University of Canterbury and several smaller colleges.  UC is the third largest "uni" in NZ, with about 13,000 students--down from 16,000 since the earthquakes of 2011.  The campus shows signs everywhere of the earthquakes' (there were two of them) damage--many buildings are closed and waiting demolition, many have been demolished already, and some are being renovated as time and budgets allow.  The government has given UC $2.5 billion for reconstruction, but that is just a drop in the bucket of what's needed, and discussions about what should get first priority draw some heated debates.

We live in a small apartment ("flat") right off campus.  The location is excellent for access to campus, groceries, the bus line, and Saturday's Farmer's Market.

Our little front patio is great for wine and music in the evenings, but those times have been limited with the consistently bad weather we've had since arriving.  However, today (3/17) looks like this picture.  The flat has 2 bedrooms, a very small kitchen, bath/toilet, and a living room.  The kitchen also contains the washer & dryer, that challenges Terry every time she uses it.

We have not taken a lot of pictures of downtown CC, where the worst damage was from the earthquakes.  In all nearly 30,000 buildings were damaged or destroyed--most of them in the Central Business District.  The few that are still standing look like this one:

This is the Arts Council building--they took the steeple down so keep it from falling later.  The Avon River runs through the center of town, and is famous for its romantic punting rides.

The botanical gardens were mostly spared from the 'quakes, and feature a number of different habitats that represent various parts of NZ.  A few weeks ago they hosted a large international garden show that we enjoyed a lot.  It was not just flowers, with lots of landscaping exhibits, lawn sculptures,

and a very strange "Flower fashion" show that got a lot of laughs:

We have learned our way around a bit with the bus system, but hope to explore more of the city that way in our last weeks here.  To be honest, we have not taken a lot of pictures in the city because the weather has been so windy and rainy--but will do that as we can and insert them back in here later.

CC is a very friendly, pretty and comfortable city--it's just too bad that we are seeing it in its present state.

Mike and Terry