Days Fifteen through Nineteen - Christchurch

December 25th-29th - So today we left Queenstown. I was sad to leave, this has definitely been an awesome couple of days. So we drove from Queenstown to Jamie's hometown of Christchurch, where we spent our last four days. The scenery on the way was just breathtaking (as it has been the whole trip).

One particular view that was amazing was this huge lake that was the color of pure turquoise and at the back was Mount Cook, which is the tallest mountain in New Zealand, and it was covered in snow, so it was this amazing contrast of solid turquoise and this white mountain peak. Just beautiful. I don't think the pictures do it any justice.

So we arrived in Christchurch at about 4:00 pm. We had dinner at Jamie's "mate's" (as-in "friend's") house, Jonathan, and his wife Rochelle. Since Jamie has moved to the States his friend has had two kids, a beautiful and very intelligent little girl named Meleana (four years old) and an adorable little boy named Blaise. Jamie and Jonathan picked up right where they left off - kicking a Rugby ball around, playing basketball, arm wrestling, you know, the usual guy stuff. It was a nice evening.

The next day we spent the morning at Jamie's Nana Rene's house, catching up with her and Jamie's mum, Dianne. Afterwards we met up at a restaurant downtown for lunch with our friend Ian (who we had dinner in Auckland with a couple weeks before.) It's this really great place downtown with chairs and tables set outside, and the food was really yummy as well. Afterwards we shopped around a bit in the downtown area. We made plans to meet at the Dux Delux (there's also one in Christchurch) for dinner, so we did. The food was awesome (as usual) and afterwards we decided to would be fun to watch a late movie, so we went and saw Ocean's 12 at about 10:00. It was really fun. So that's about it for our second day in Christchurch.

The third day in Chch (Christchurch) we spent the day touring around Christchurch, going to places that we went to when I had first come to New Zealand over five years before. It was really great to be at those places again, it felt like it had been forever since I had first been there. So we went to some beautiful gardens, and we stopped by Jamie's old work and said hi to one of his old workmate's. We had fish & chips at one of the best places, which is in Brighton beach. It was just a day of nostalgia for us.

That evening we had dinner at this amazing place that Jamie has always told me about, called The Sign of the Takahe. It is this amazing castle/ fort looking place on the side of the Port Hills. It is like having dinner in a castle in England, it is just so authentic, and beautiful, and the service was unbelievable, very high class. What was really amazing was that we had a view out of the windows looking down the hills and out over the city, and it was absolutely beautiful because we were there at sunset, which was a beautiful array of purples and yellows that evening. It was an amazing dinner. One of the best I have ever experienced, because that's really what it was, not just dinner, truly an experience. After we had finished eating we drove around the Port Hills and looked at the city lights below. It was a great day!

Our last full day in Chch was spent doing some more sightseeing in the morning, and then going to Jamie's mum's Bible study in the afternoon. She has some very sweet people in her study. It's wonderful how united we all are all over the world. :-) Afterwards we went over to has Nana's house and visited with a lot more of his family - aunts, uncles, cousins, etc. - and shared our trip pictures with them, all 500 of them!! Only family is obligated to be subjected to that! But they said that they really liked the pictures (and his 10 year old cousin was just thankful she made it through the presentation!) So it was nice meeting some more of Jamie's family, and meeting ones that I hadn't met before. Afterwards Jamie and I said bye for the last time to his nana and mum (which is sad because there will definitely be a space of time before Jamie sees them again) and we headed out to dinner.

We ate a nice restaurant downtown named Azure. Afterwards we made one of our most important stops, we had hot chocolate at "Le Cafe." That was a place that we went to very often when we were dating. It was one of those special places for us, so it was wonderful to go back and reminisce. As we left Le Cafe we were just amazed that our adventure was coming to end. It truly has been an amazing experience, the best of my lifetime. It's sad to see it coming to an end, but all good things must. I just feel truly fortunate to have been able to have such a great adventure, and to share it with such a wonderful man, my best friend, my husband.

So goodbye to New Zealand. You have shown us some unbelievable sights. This has been a trip of a lifetime. Until next time...

:'-)