Walking in Chch

I arrived in Christchurch (Chch), unpacked, and then slept for 12 hours. It might not have been the most social option, but I did enjoy it. When I woke up the next day I set off with my back pack and laptop hoping to find some wifi. My flat (flat = apartment) has internet that you have to pay for, but at the time I didn't have a cord to connect with and I was hoping for a cheaper option. Say what you want, but I am helpless without the internet. I didn't have any way to get information about buses, shops, maps, nothing! I had nothing to do but start walking.

I read in my guidebook about about a coffee shop with free wifi so I set out in that direction, ready for a walk. Well, I didn't realize quite how far that was from where I live. After walking almost an hour I found a McDonalds with free wifi so I bought a fruit smoothie and sat online, trying to look up everything I could think of. After a while I had reached my data limit and finished my smoothie so I walked across the parking lot to the mall, hoping to find another hot spot. A store with wifi was next to a food place so I had lunch and an internet connection until I timed out again. While online I looked up info about the metro and and I found a library not too far away that sold metro cards so I headed in that direction. I walked for an hour, only to find it closed. I walked back to my apartment to meet my flatmates and ask them about the closest supermarket. I walked a couple blocks and finally got some food. In all that walking, I never got lost once, I'm just  a bad judge of scale so what looked like a spot around the corner was in reality, much farther away.

Monday was a public holiday so I used that day to get some stuff done. I had just enough change (3.20) for a metro ticket.  I got on my bus, dumped the change in my hand and the driver picked up a two dollar coin and handed me change and a ticket. I  might be 20, but I still look like a child so the bus driver charged me half price and gave me a child's ticket. Now that I've got a metro card that won't happen again, but the card is cheaper than paying with change so I'll take it. 

The central bus station is right next to the reStart mall so I went there for a while and looked around. After the earthquake last february, most of downtown is unusable. Either the buildings collapsed or have enough structural damage that it is too dangerous. For quite some time now, in the place of buildings they are using shipping containers for stores. The containers are painted bright colors and stacked together  so it's just like an ultra-modern outdoor mall. I didn't go much past the reStart area, but the shops beyond that section did look pretty dismal. I didn't see any collapsed buildings, but the walls were boarded up and construction cranes were working on the high-rises.

I wanted to have some more fun with my metro card so I took the bus to a different part of town and walked around for a bit. Eventually I rode back to my apartment and started planning for the next week. I had to figure out the metro times and transfers to get to work the next morning and I found some things to do this weekend. I had an early night so I could wake up bright and early for my commute to work on Tuesday. I'll tell you all about Bio-Mer soon!