New Zealand - Day 1 - This time for real

I know, I know.

You’ve heard from me a lot.

I promise, from now on, it’s one blog post per day.

Two max.

But we truly are in New Zealand now.

Not just the airports.

Not just planes in air.

But feet on ground, wheels to the road, truly in the country.

We’re officially starting our trip in Christchurch, a pretty major city. We’re not staying long – really just the one night to acclimate, but we’re staying at a nice Airbnb where the hosts have been lovely, and…I’m skipping ahead a teeny tiny bit.

We land.

We take a shuttle to our rental car place, pass by the “Antarctica Experience” which I have never heard of but now wish we had time to visit…all I know is that it has a 4D theater and talks about Antarctica – yes I may have been to the real place but it sounds like fun!

But instead we head to a wool store – If you don’t know, New Zealand sells a lot of merino wool….and possum fur.

Possums are a real problem here, AND they’re not native so they have a…thing? Where they kill possum’s and use their fur in clothing.

Sorry animal lovers.

The fur is actually really nice though, and they have to minimize the population because they have no natural predators here (and are ruining the ecosystem…anyways) So at least they’re doing something about it.

Shopped around a bit, then the store was closing at 2, so off we….off…what to do? The women in the store gave us a few suggestions, and one of them was visit a certain park where they had botanical gardens.

It was just perfect.

The gardens were these huge sweeping stands of trees, flowers (duh), several greenhouses, AND….the original workshop where Robert F Scott and Eric Shackleton prepped for their Antarctic expeditions!

the place was HUGE

AND FREE and it was a beautiful sunny day in the 60s with bird song all around It was a lot of fun. So many people were out and about, but I felt like we had so much space to ourselves still – I think the grounds are just that large. We passed by huge tour groups, families, kids playing soccer/footie? and jump rope We saw couples taking cute photos together, and I feel like one proposal but I’m guessing at that one. (Didn’t see a knee, but the picnic, the camera set up? It felt like dude had a plan.) I loved seeing all the flowers and plants – they had it set up by region a lot which I really enjoyed. And after the botanical garden our day slowly wrapped up. We went to our BnB, met our hosts, and kinda…. We didn’t nap, but I feel like our eyes glazed over. Our host suggested we get dinner at a place that was a short walk away to stave off the *SUPER* early bedtime Place called the Long Night – a bar kinda place – we got there at 5 pm and were like, “Hi, I hear there’s food here?” and the waitress/bartender kinda gave us this look and said, “Sure, but we’re going to sit two parties here shortly.” So we sat in *not* those sections, had some cider, had some good bites, and watched some cakes get delivered (def home made, but delicious looking) and people slowly trickle in. The food was great, but we were feeling our travel so we walked back, where I briefly made friends with a black cat (Miss you Nissan!) and now we’re getting ready for bed. It's not even 9pm. I was hoping typing would help but it’s been a…..well not… but it’s okay Our day was short, but great! And now we will sleep to be able to make the most of the rest of our trip! Good night everyone!