Now in New Zealand (post 9)

We have arrived at our second country on our mammoth tour of down under. But our last night in Australia was not without incident. We had a taxi booked to take us to the airport at 7 o'clock so had an alarm set for 6. in the middle of the night (2:30) the fire alarm sounded, followed by the instruction to evacuate.

We threw on some clothes over our pajamas and made our way down the emergency stairs from the 12th floor. When we arrived at the bottom just by the foyer there was a fire engine outside the building with its lights flashing. We were then told that we could go back in because some flippin numpty (my words) was smoking in their room.

We did make the taxi in time and we were able to get our flight to Christchurch, this time we flew Quantas.

Once in Christchurch and we had checked into our hotel we had one thing that was important to do. We had to find a launderette as we had two weeks dirty undies to get clean. We found one just around the corner from the hotel and made plans to come back in the morning. We then went for something to eat.

I said we had booked into the hotel, I didn't tell you about the bathroom. It was on my side of the bed and had a glass wall. Yes, Wilma could watch me having a shower from the comfort of her bed. This didn't happen because there was a blind that you could lower using a switch in the bathroom and I wanted to spare Wilma her blushes.

The next morning we went back to the Launderette and got our things cleaned. We then spent the day on the trams. it was a hop on hop off service which took just under an hour if you went all the way round..

We did get off to go and see the cardboard cathedral which was built as a temporary place of worship after the earthquake of 2010. it was made out of shipping containers and metal joists that were covered in tubes of cardboard.

the other stop we made was at Quake City which told the story of Christchurch immediately after the 2010 earthquake and what they are doing now to help with the rebuilding of the city.

there was one building being demolished in the city centre. it is just being done now after 10 years of negotiations between the owners and the insurance company.

We grabbed something to eat in an Irish bar and went back to the hotel for an early night because we were on the road again tomorrow.

Please take a look at the transport and eat pages. I am updating them during the holidays