Quake City

Here's what I got for ya this afternoon! I did a little exploring around the city.  I'm pretty sure if I were wearing my fitbit, I would have definitely reached my 10k steps.  I took the bus down to Victoria Street and then walked to the city centre.  Christchurch is a beautiful city, very clean and the people are extremely friendly.

Because no one reading this has EVER seen the inside of a bus, right???

You can Give way, or you could just "Yield"

Christchurch has had it's share of earthquakes in the last several years and you can still see the devastation all over town, but what is amazing is the resiliency of the people that live here and their ingenuity to not let the destruction of the earthquakes keep them down.  Everywhere you look, there is construction or signs telling you to keep out.  Buildings such as the cathedral below are braced to keep them from further falling to the ground. Other places there is nothing more than an empty lot where a building once stood.

See the blue ratchet straps holding the angel to the cross??

What I found to be extremely cool was the fact that amid all the destruction, you could begin to see the new buildings taking shape along with some great ideas.  What do you do when your shopping mall is destroyed?  Make one out of shipping containers, that's what.  It's called Re-Start and its pretty awesome. 

  Re-Start is a combination of stores and artwork.  I saw several metal sculptures while walking around.  These appear to be made out of lots of tiny pieces of metal all spot welded together. There are also some political undertones in some of the art, such as the street sign display showing the peoples displeasure with the way some of the reconstruction has gone.

I found several green spaces and a nice little river that runs through part of town.  The Remembrance bridge is pretty impressive and was built in memory of New Zealanders who fought in WWII.

I took a few photos of the "Wall of Flags 2"  this was designed by Sara Hughes in response to all the empty flagpoles in the city center after the earthquakes, it reminded me of prayer flags.

If you have been downtown in Fort Smith lately, you've likely seen some of the Unexpected Project Murals, Christchurch has it's version.  It may be part of the unexpected project, who knows?

Actually caught one of the artists working on this mural

If you are looking to buy a car, I recommend looking somewhere other than New Zealand!  You can pick up this base model Hyundai for $24,900 or go for the Hyundai Tucson for $35,990!

Uhhh, small price tag??? For that car?

Some other cool stuff folks are doing in the downtown area is re-purposing rubble materials from the earthquakes to make fun and purposeful greenspace.  This is a small park area that has been designed to catch storm runoff water and help purify it.  Using natural rock, and plants to help filter the water before releasing it.

This old piano was in the rubble and was put here under cover, I suppose anyone can stop and play it anytime.  I thought this plant exchange was a neat idea, mostly because of my lack of a green thumb.  I wonder if they would get really mad if people like me brought dead plants to exchange for healthy live plants...Hmmmm?

Below are just a few random photos of buildings or other things I thought were interesting.

This is a cairn, made with rocks from the rubble.  People wrote prayers and other things on them after the cathedral was damaged. 

My friend Jim will be happy to know that "The Boss" will be in concert here in February!

What's a city without a good ol Irish Pub?  Actually this is a new old Irish pub, the original was destroyed in the earthquake and the only remnants are a large chunk of wood from the original bar that is now hanging on the wall.

Last but not least, I did find a RAZORBACK in Christchurch, unfortunately he's on the Panini menu with the Ostrich, Goat, Crocodile, etc...

Stay tuned, I'll see what I can find tomorrow!