Christchurch Mini-Break - Day 1

Christchurch Mini-Break - Day 1

30 January 2020

A relaxed breakfast helped us start the day off in the appropriate fashion, before taking a short bus ride to the city centre of Christchurch.

When looking at a map of Christchurch you see what appears to be a large city. The city centre itself is not that large, but the remaining surrounding areas are a massive suburban sprawl that goes on for miles.

The city centre seems no bigger than that of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, which itself has a quite compact city centre. The centre of Christchurch still bears considerable visual evidence of the 2 major earthquakes 9 years ago that wrought death and destruction on the city.

There has been much reconstruction but there are still a lot of empty disused buildings with visible damage waiting to be dealt with, standing alongside open spaces cleared for redevelopment where buildings once stood.

In fact an elderly lady who was staying next door to us was a Christchurch resident, was being put up in temporary accommodation for 7-10 weeks, was only now getting repairs done to her house!

We took a tourist sightseeing bus trip around the city centre for an hour before perusing the many stalls in Cathedral Square, in the shadow of the severely damaged cathedral.

We took a walk around some of the city centre street and shops before our return bus trip.