November 24
We spent the day touring the Cathedral inside and out while listening to an organ concert. (Actually there were 2 organists who played while we were there.)
Gerry even climbed up the very narrow, very steep staircase into the bell tower. He had quite the view of the city, of Cathedral Square and even of a chess game in progress.
Christchurch has electric trams that travel in a circle route through the downtown area. There is commentary by the drivers about the area and some of the historic buildings. One of the drivers elaborated a little with his commentary. For instance, he described a sushi restaurant that had a rotating sushi bar as being designed by Weight Watchers. He said, “by the time you’ve made your choice it’s moved out of reach thus keeping your calories down”! Then he showed us the store where “shoes go when they die”. (It was a shoe repair store where they also dyed shoes!)
We hopped on & off several times to see the old stone buildings of the Arts Centre (which used to be part of Christ College) & the Botanic Gardens (with a beautiful fountain)
(in one of the Arts buildings they had a mini museum set up of Rutherford’s Den – he won the Nobel prize for his work on splitting the atom.)
Also of the punting on the Avon & a little grocery shop right out of the 20s (still doing a thriving business),
the town crier and a street that had been designed as a mirror image (both sides were exactly the same) in a Spanish style. The tiles on the buildings were imported from Majorca.
While I was doing a little shopping and reading about atom-splitting, Gerry took a tour on his own. He not only gained some knowledge but probably a little weight too as he got to do some taste testing.
We dined out in an Irish pub close to our hotel that had a cute little sign out front.
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