All in a Day's Work

Andrew is on Easter break now and has about 1 week off. We are taking the time to explore a lot of the city and do some little outings. Yesterday we visited Hagley Park (which we frequent quite often). We like to hang out in the Botanical Gardens. It's absolutely massive. When we went with Sue in February, I didn't realize we didn't even explore the half of it. Here's some of my favourites from yesterday. It's Fall here and the leaves are beautiful.





Today we did a few things. We went to St. Albans Park and Logan played on the playground for a while and I went on the Flying Fox. Flying Foxes are sooo fun! Then we went to Spencer Beach. Spencer Beach is really neat because there's so much to do there. We actually went yesterday to the animal park at Spencer Beach, and today we decided to check out the actual beach. There's all kinds of trails and hikes through marshlands, forest, and beach. We will definitely have to go back and check out more of the park because there's so much to do.



Then after the kids naps, we headed up to Victoria Park in the Port Hills. It was absolutely magnificent. After you get past the drive which is reminiscent of the drive up to Abel Tasman and the vertigo, you land at a beautiful park (although I have a hard time calling it a park because the Toronto notion of park is very different than the Kiwi one. Think like Algonquin park maybe?). There is everything to do from downhill mountain biking to picnicking to hiking. There is even a children's playground at the top. We checked out the Visitor's centre in Victoria Park to get some info on the trails but unfortunately it was closed due to Earthquake damage. We decided to just hang out at the kids playground for a bit and just take in the magnificent view of the city, mountains, and ocean.




I almost can't comprehend that all in one day we hung out at the beach and chilled atop what I would say is a small mountain and that each was only a 15 minute drive from where we live. I am absolutely in love with this city. I can't believe how much there is to do and how much more we have to explore. We live in an absolutely stunning city (even though the Earthquake has damaged some of that). I can't believe how much there is to do for free and as we are becoming locals, we are learning about all kinds of spots and things to do that aren't in the tourist brochures.

For more pictures of Hagley Park and Victoria Park check out our albums on the right.

Logan's First Steps

Logan made her first steps today. She started taking a few and I quickly grabbed my ipod and started recording.



Here's another video of Logan playing peekaboo with Fox



And Logan and me singing everybody's favourite purple dinosaur's song. Ok seriously nobody likes Barney and he's super irritating but all children just seem to love him and hey lets face it, you can't say a 20 month old singing a tune isn't cute.

Westburn Bike Park

This is a sweet park near us where kids can ride their bikes on a course. I put some pics in the Beach and Babies album.

New Brighton and Woodend Beach

This past week, we went to 2 different beaches: New Brighton and Woodend. Both are about a 30 minute drive from where we live (mostly because of traffic not distance). New Brighton is a general area of where we'd like to move when our contract is up here at the University. I took some pictures and from the pictures New Brighton looks really nice, but we've discovered is really ghetto. We were told it was ghetto before we moved to NZ but couldn't understand why when it looks so nice.

Our plan for that afternoon was to go to the New Brighton Library so Andrew could study and I could take the kids to the library and the playground. I first took the kids into the library which is really nice, and Logan was being miserable so I decided to take them outside to the playground. The playground was deserted and it's Ocean front and really nice. We were having an ok time except for Logan being miserable and then the junkie that decided to come and pass out on the picnic table at the children's playground. At the Countdown (the local supermarket) in New Brighton we've also noticed lots of gangs hanging around blasting their music and giving people a hard time as they enter/exit shops. I guess this is what people meant by ghetto. We still would like to move there, just to North or South New Brighton which is a 3 minute drive down the road and a totally different world. You still get beach minus the ghetto-ness. If the city put some money into central New Brighton, it could be a really nice tourist destination.

Yesterday we decided to go to a beach outside of Christchurch called Woodend to have a lunch picnic. It was a pretty nice day, a little drizzle (which stopped quickly) and about 15 degrees I'd say. We walked the short trail to the beach which reminded me a lot of an Ontario type trail and then we were at the beach. Ocean front, beautiful sand and not a single other person as far as we could see. Another couple eventually came and took a quick walk on the beach, but for the most part, we had this massive beach to ourselves. It was awesome!

I still can't believe you can go to the beach and it's not really ever busy. Right now they are empty because the water is polluted from the sewage from the earthquake. However even in summer, when everyone is at the beach, it's still never really busy.

For pictures from our beach adventures, check out the link on the right.