So the previous night we were so exhausted we were asleep within minutes of getting to bed. The night before I'd managed to call upon a well of hidden endurance, and hand wash my stinking clothes. We awoke at about 6.30am having slept for about 8 hours, not bad for a day we'd written off for jetlag! We felt a little drained, but certainly up for a day of exploring!
We caught the bus back to the airport, enquired about our bags (Yo's had been found, mine not - but he seemed to think that they may both be on the same flight, and we'd fine out when they were delivered), bought a sim card for Yo's phone, and picked up our rental car. The car was a Vaughan, blue, automatic, and nicely compact. It came with us for our music (nice!), and plenty of cup holders. You can always tell the quality of a car by the cup holders.
Car firmly in possession, a whole city to explore? What would you do? Explore some culture? Get up into the local hills? We went to McDonald's.
McDonald's.
They serve pies, have their own cafe with barista's and everything. They even do soy coffee. Different world from the MaccyDs back in the UK.
In fact I've decided whenever I go to a new course try, I'll endeavour to sample a McDonalds. I reckon you can suss out the cultural identity of a country by what their McDonald's are like. I think I'm on to something.
After quite an excellent coffee, we got back into the car and went exploring Yo's old neighbourhood. It had changed quite a bit. Her house was completely different. Knocked down and rebuilt from the ground up. They even relocated where the drive used to be.
Yo had already heard about the change, but still seeing it was quite a jarring experience. If i want to see where I grew up, I just walk down the street to my mums house. I see it every week and have never even thought about it not being there anymore. A whole portion of my life erased from the face of the earth like it had never been. I'd find it quite sad, but Yo took it in her stride.
The local shop she used to buy sweets from was also closed, and a local garage had been turned into a new Dairy (the NZ term for market shop). Fearing dehydraton, I bought something called L&P lemonade from there and immediately fell in love.
We then sought out a few of her locations that she remembered; a bridge, a couple of parks and an old friends house (also gone). As we drove around, it became quite apparent that Christchurch was nowhere near to recovering from the 2010/2011 Earthquakes - though I'll leave my thoughts on this for another post.
After we'd taken a visit down memory lane, it was time to meet up with some old friends - see, at the time Yo's family moved to Israel, some of her families friends were also making the move. Miraculously, they were also visiting New Zealand the same time we were, and whilst we tend to meet up with them whenever we go to Israel, the timings seemed too perfect. After a quick phone call, we agreed a time for them to pop round to our apartment and caught up. They brought their three children with them (who fell in love with the grapes we'd just bought from the shop), and whilst they amused themselves, the grown ups reminisced on old times. Fitting, considering we'd spent the day visiting the same places they'd grown up!
After they'd gone it was too soon to go to bed, but we were feeling pretty drained, so we took a (long) stroll on the beach, walking up to the pier where we watched a party of men catch crabs whilst we felt strangely like we were intruding.
Now truly exhausted, we slogged it back home and went to bed.
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