We are at our last destination. Hard to believe. The drive here wasn’t bad and the hotel is nice. The question became: what did we want to do? Being tourists, a main activity (especially at the end of a trip) is shopping for things to give the folks back home. Our hotel is out near the airport and I had less than no desire to get back into the car. As such, we decided to take the bus into town. It seemed very simple, very inexpensive ($4.00 a person) and the bus runs every 30 minutes. Perfect.
We went outside, caught the bus and headed into town. One small problem: there is a festival going on and we were stuck in traffic for a LONG time. Robin figured out the first stop that would allow us to walk downtown and we got off. That was a huge relief.
We walked around town for a bit trying to find interesting places to shop without much success. We did find a beautiful little garden in honor of people who lost their lives in an earthquake that struck the city. We also found a very interesting art center, but unfortunately most of the shows were closed.
Across the street from the art center was the Botanic Garden. What an incredible treat. There were so many different sections to the garden: a rock garden, a New Zealand specific garden, a rose garden. Every corner had a different treat for us to see. We walked around the gardens for more than an hour and had a wonderful time.
Robin made a dinner reservation at a restaurant called “27 steps”. The bar for the restaurant is on the ground floor and the actual restaurant is upstairs (no bonus points given for guessing how many steps you have to climb to get to the restaurant). Once again we had a wonderful meal. All of our meals have been great. After dinner we caught the bus back to the hotel. It couldn’t have been easier.
It’s a little sad that we are almost at the end of our journey and, as I’ve mentioned many times, it has been a wonderful vacation.
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