For Christmas Mark and decided that we should get acquainted with our new city. We started the day by opening presents and having a nice breakfast and then went for a bike ride around the city. It was pretty quiet as the whole place was shut down but still nice to get out and see what the city has to offer. We tried to keep our eyes open for apartment locations as we will be living on land for a few months. We found a couple of postings and were even able to set up an appointment to see one today. We found a nice arts district that had a coffee shop open and enjoyed a little snack and chatted with some women who were off a cruise ship. The eldest, and mother of the other two, was a sailor and told us about her sailing days.
After our ride we headed back to the hostel to relax. I baked up a batch of cookies and for dinner we bar-b-qued some steaks and corn. Many of the people who had been out during the day returned to the hostel including our new friend Alex. I shared my cookies with anyone around and invited them to do our Christmas puzzle with us. A few people worked on it for a few minutes but it was only Alex that really helped out. We stayed up really late! So late that we were awake for an earthquake that hit about 2:30am. It shook pretty good but being from CA it didn't really phase Mark or I like it did some of the other people who were awoken by it and had never experienced one before. We continued to work on the puzzle Mark lasted until about 3:00 and then we lost him to bed. Alex stuck it out about another 20 min before leaving me all alone to finish up on my own. I completed it about 40 minutes later through a few more smaller shakes.
This morning we had an appointment to see an apartment so we headed over about 10am. During the showing the biggest of the aftershocks hit (I think it was in the 4.2 range). It gave us a pretty good shake. We went into Cathedral Square to see what was happening. Tons of people around and police closing off buildings and streets. Lots of people taking pictures. We tried to look at some of the damage but got yelled at by a cop so we decided we'd go back to the hostel. We we got back there was a new arrival at the hostel, Herrmann, who was putting together his tricycle. He is planning to bike NZ for a couple of months. We chatted with him for awhile and invited him to take a ride and get dinner when he was done putting his bike together. In the meantime, Mark and I played with our new bocci ball set that I got him for Christmas.
Once Herrmann was ready we headed out. We couldn't believe how fast they had gotten fencing and barriers up around the downtown area to close off anything that was even the tiniest bit damaged. We had to take the long way around the city and found it hard to find a restaurant that wasn't closed but we finally succeeded and had a great meal! There were a lot of aftershocks throughout the day and it made our first few days in our new city pretty eventful.
Click to see pictures from
Christmas
Click to see pictures of the
Earthquakes