Thursday January 9, 2014

We had an excellent evening with our warm-showers host last night.  Biffy arrived home at about 6:00 p.m. and proceeded to make us a wonderful salmon “quiche”  it had potatoes as the base and was lovely.

We chatted with Biffy until 11:00, we knew we were going to have lie-in which we did until 8:00 a.m.  We had a relaxing breakfast and decided to catch the bus into Christchurch.  It was a very interesting and somewhat sombre day.

The devastation that the February 2011 earthquake caused is awful.  There has been some rebuilding, but the area that we walked around there was still a lot of buildings that need to be torn down. Part of the problem with the recovery project is the discovery of asbestos in some of the buildings, built pre-1970.

It was so very sad seeing the Cathedral in such a state.  We also went to the Botanical gardens, which was absolutely beautiful.

 The range of emotions that Ralf and I felt as we went from the peace and serenity of the Botanical Gardens to see the old architectural buildings that are literally falling down or have been taken down.

We also went in to the Re-Start Mall.  This is an area of Christchurch where the buildings have been torn down and replaced with sea containers as boutique shops.  They have great ideas and designs in place to rebuild the area, but it will take a long time.

As Ralf said the heart of the City may have been torn out, but the spirit lives on.

The Botanical gardens, it was a little chilly in Christchurch.