Another Christchurch Wander

We decided to check out the cardboard cathedral after a very chilled out morning. This hostel is far nicer than the last so it was good to sit outside and eat breakfast in the nice garden and actually chill out in the TV room without feeling awkward.

I wanted to take photos of some of the construction being done or new buildings but in all honesty there wasn't really any worth taking a photo of just yet. There aren't many complete and most are so covered in scaffolding that they don't look like much. Be better to just revisit one day!

The cardboard cathedral is not what I had expected. It is made of shipping containers and a corrugated plastic roof and on the outside just looks like a big triangle with large panels of coloured plastic for stained glass windows. It already looks quite impressive considering what it is made of. Inside though is most impressive. There are huge cardboard rolls/tubes that line the ceiling, all the way from top to bottom, completely disguising the plastic roof and actually making the place feel very much like a church inside. The simplicity of it is quite beautiful really. The alter and other such things are also made of cardboard and it looks like a wedding might be going on today. A very clever design that completely serves it's purpose and is made from such basic materials. They want to build a small shipping container bell tower next too as only one bell cracked when the cathedrals tower fell down.

We wandered some more of this part of the city, a few more of the older buildings seem to have survived here but there are still big gaps where the CBD once was. More awesome graffiti covers the walls though.
We wandered through a gap filler of sofas that are designed to look like grass and some colourful grazing geometric cows. Rob managed to bang his broken toe on a shirt metal stub in the ground so we had to sit for a while. It was just starting to get better and now it is worse again. New Zealand hates his toe it would seem as this is the millionth time he has banged it. Unfortunately flip flops are the only shoe he can wear.

We had some food, ice cream and smoothies from the restart mall after looking for some souvenirs. We got talking to a Kiwi woman behind the till about going home and it turned out she is from Kenya (her accent would never give it away) and how nice it was after years to go back and just hear the accent and the other things that despite not seeing for so long still feel familiar. She was very nice and chatty and we ended up discussing British vs Kiwi confectionary. Apparently this is one thing we miss :)

Back at the hostel we had a snooze...Rob banged his toe again on a chair getting out of the bunk (hopefully he will still have a toe when we leave) and then we cooked dinner and watched a movie before bed. It's nice to have a couple of days to wind down like this.Read more