Day 8: Christchurch & Plane Ride Home (view photo set here)

Our last morning in New Zealand we explored the Christchurch CBD, I noted it was a picturesque city with an English cottage/village feel centering around a town style city square, "Cathedral Square" where there was a mid week craft/tourism market. Turns out as advised by a city host the town was designed to be a southern hemisphere outpost of the Church of England (hence the English feel) and is a sister city to Adelaide designed by the same town planner, I am yet to travel to Adelaide so can not make the comparison. The eye catching structure that we took a group photo in front of is the "Chalice" it was built to celebrate the new millennium and the 150th anniversary of the founding of Christchurch. The Chalice is a cone shaped mosaic of all the native leaves of New Zealand.
In the afternoon we made our way to the airport stocked up on more duty free alcohol two 1 liter bottles allowed into Australia. The new alcohol left us with the problem of what do to with the open alcohol left over from trip… The answer??? Drink as much as possible over lunch at the airport and carry the rest onto the plane mixed with coke, "waste not want not..." The plane trip home was entertaining playing “Up the River Down the River” a card game Andrew had taught us which lead to some funny photos (photo 2) and some group photos (could we have found Stevie D lost twin???).