Christchurch - Rest Day

Late post. This should have been posted at the end of Friday, March 31st.

Breakfast

We got up around 8 and decided to strike out and for breakfast. It's a pretty quiet city on Friday mornings. Figuratively. It's literally quite noisy because of all the construction. Most places we found did not open until 10 or 11. We found The Coffee Club on Victoria St and had a nice breakfast and really good cappuccinos.

Laundry

Then we went home to get our day of rest going! I showered, caught up on blogging, and took a little nap. Mike did the laundry, caught up on reddit, and read a lot of his Kindle book. The dryer wasn't super, so he had to lay out the slightly damp laundry. It was the kind of damp where you might just think it was cold.

Mike laid out any laundry that was still damp

Wandering

At 6 pm, we finally struck out again for some more exploring. We passed the clock tower and went through The Commons, where there was a gap filler project, a food truck, and a not-for-profit community bike shack, among other things.

Hagley Park

Christ's College

Canterbury Museum

Peacock Fountain - no peacocks. Named after John Thomas Peacock.

Bridge of Remembrance - in honor of those lost in WWI

Re:Start Mall

Dinner

We kept thinking that Friday evening in a city shouldn't be so quiet. Most places seemed empty. We found a few restaurants and decided on the last one, an Indian place called Mumbaiwala. We passed the other restaurants and could see in the windows that there were only a few tables in each. Then we walked into Mumbaiwala, which has blacked out windows. Whoa! The bustle and the noise was shocking. We found everyone!

I got a Bombay Pimms (Pimms, coriander, mint, ginger beer) and Mike got a ginger beer (alcoholic) from Boundary Road Brewing.

Top: Kerala Coconut Prawns, Chana Dal Chaat, Lamb Kofta Balls
Bottom: Lamb Chops, Murgh Makhani (butter chicken), with rice and naan (not pictured)

Bombay Colada: Malibu rum, coconut cream, coriander, chai, lime, pineapple juice

Too much food. And delicious. And super spicy! Cat would have been so proud of me.

After dinner we made our way back to the hotel and passed some food trucks. More people, but still not a lot for 8:30 on a Friday. A lot of the food trucks were actually closing up shop.

Food trucks, Cathedral Square

Food trucks in front of The Chalice, Cathedral Square

Big chess pieces stored in here

Good night

We don't have any real plans for tomorrow. We can putter around Christchurch some more, though, to be honest, I think we're finished. We don't feel like punting on the Avon or doing the museum or botanical gardens (which is like a 90 minute walking tour if you do it properly). Just want to get my knee rested up so that it will be in good enough condition for the glacier in a few days. Maybe we'll drive to Akaroa -- I'd really like to see some Hector's dolphins, the world's smallest dolphins.