After a great afternoon celebrating my niece's 8th birthday, and then a relaxing evening with my Aunt and Uncle and cousins in Blenheim, managed to get down to Christchurch in time to catch up with my sister, brother-in-law and nephew for a day before heading back to Melbourne. The bus ride down was memorable for the snow nearly down to road level and the huge number of seals near Kaikoura. On Sunday, the weather was superb - glorious sunshine, albeit pretty cold - -2degrees on our drive to the airport at 4 am Monday morning - a noble effort from my sister and nephew to get up that early to see us off.
We spent a very pleasant afternoon at the Christchurch Gondola - even bought the "been there done that" photo in spite of it not quite being a perfect shot of my beautiful daughter who only got half into the shot due to the gondola taking off a little too quickly for the photographer. The views from the top were magnificent over Banks Peninsula and back toward Christchurch and the Alps, and it was all set off nicely with the many parapenters drifting gently down to land almost perfectly on target in the park below the Gondola carpark.
Also managed a little retail therapy and stocked up on merino/possum socks (sorry to my Australian friends for the possum bit, but at 90million, New Zealand just has too many of them to get too sentimental!). Couldn't get enough, but bought the entire stock (all seven pairs) available, as well as a few polypropylene socks in anticipation of the cold in Europe - am wearing them now, and they are great!
All in all, a great trip and so good to see everyone.
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