Spring Break! (Part 2: Hogsmeade... aka Markets. And Beaches. Though beaches have nothing to do with Hogsmeade...)

Day four!

In Chinese, the word "four" is a homonym for the word "dead." Hotels in the US don't have a 13th floor (at least, not a floor labeled as the 13th floor) because the number 13 is supposedly bad luck. In China, you'll find that there is no 4th floor, 14th floor, 24th floor, or 34th floor. I wonder, though, whether or not they just ignore the 40th to 49th floors. I've never been to a building in China that's tall enough to include those....

But yes. Day four.

The Day of Death.

Which has absolutely nothing to do with by fourth day of spring break. We were still in Christchurch... I believe it was either a Friday or a Saturday. That meant the marketplace downtown was open, so our Christchurch hosts decided to bring us down for some shopping fun.

We had to walk through Cathedral Square again, which was filled up this time.

The marketplace had little cakes for sale, lots of souvenir-type-stuff, crepes, fudge, delicious Greek food, and seagulls. Yes. Even all the way across the Pacific Ocean, those birds still hunt people down for the food in their hands.



And oh! There was a street performer! He wasn't a magician, but he did some magic-like stunts. This is him lying down on a bed of broken glass while a spectator jumped on him.

The stunts were ok, but the performance was really entertaining. He was energetic - exactly what a street crowd looks for in the middle of a marketplace.

Finally, for the Scots out there, a man in a kilt blowing a bagpipe:

Fun as.

After that, we took a bus to Sumner's Beach. It's not a wildly tourist-y location... and you may miss it if you're taking a quick tour of New Zealand. It's definitely not at the top of any lists, but it was one of my favorite places in New Zealand.

It's a beautiful beach with soft, shell-less white sand (unlike the yucky stuff on the Jersey shore). At some points, it's almost impossible to differentiate the sky from the water. What's more - the beach has these giant rock structures that are absurdly fun to climb. There are random mussel shells on them. And this entire beach is the foreground to another beautiful view - there are mountains in the background, white with the winter snow. You will see pictures...

I just wanted to say, though, that I think I missed out on the climbing-everything-into-every-hole stage as a child. I have a Kiwi friend who pointed out the urge to jump into a hole that she saw (we were on a class field trip... this blog entry will come later). I would have loved to do more of that....

But here we go.

Sumner Beach:


My friends decided to take off their shoes so that they can go for a dip in the water. It's winter... not as bad as it is here, but definitely not warm enough to go for a swim. So while they adventured forth on bare feet, my sister and I stole their shoes and ran to the top of the rock structure. I deposited their shoes there and waited for them to come.

Yes. That's right. We stole their shoes.

Then we just climbed around the little rock thingies for a bit. People took lots of pictures... and they all ended up looking like band pictures or something. Strange...


And here's this really tall part that had a path up it on the other side. Most people took that path. Since I was bitten by the climbing bug, I decided to take the risk and brave the climb upwards without any climbing gear. I was joined by another friend, and we had a nice climb up to the top. Didn't climb down though... don't think I could have managed that.



And here's the path that most people took to get up. We used it to get down.


And don't forget the caves.


Here you can see both the entrance to the caves and the main rock structure that we climbed up.

That night, we thanked our hosts by cooking dinner for them. The Auckland group (that's me, my two friends, and my sister) went to the supermarket, bought taco-making things and pasta stuff, and cooked. It was fun and a good way to end our time in Christchurch.

The next morning, we hopped on a plane and headed for Dunedin - home of both the Speight's beer factory and a Cadbury chocolate factory. More on that later... but, in the meantime, a thank you to Brad, Angelica, Shalom, Heather, and Florence for taking all these pictures.