New Zealand - day 2/3

April 6 - day 2
Christchurch
We heard there was a market nearby at Riccarton. Thank goodness we got the GPS...changed her English to Australian. Still not as sweet sounding as our GPS in Melbourne.
An overzealous Novotel bellman gave us directions.
It was a nice market but a bit junky. The food was delicious!!! We shared a bacon and egg sandwich with tomato and onion...the nice touch they have here is that onions are sauteed...yum!
We had a spiral potato...just like chips on a stick. Sliced with a drill...:-)
And shared an Egyptian lentil soup. It was nice to speak Arabic to the owners....they said I don't look Egyptian...don't know how we're supposed to look.
We then drove to Sumner on the coast, only 15 minutes away.  That's when we started to believe we were in NZ!!!
Everyone was strolling along the promenade....there is almost a Nordic feel....not that we've ever been, but that's how I  imagine it to be like.
At the end of the esplanade, we found a quaint restaurant where the locals gathered. it was reasonably priced....food and beer is much cheaper than Melbourne!
Even on this cloudy, rough day, the view was spectacular!
We then set the GPS to Lyttleton and got to a closed road...closed since the earth quake. It would be a detour of many km to go around to it, so we left the car and continued up the road to look at the view and then snuck past roadblock see what missed...spectacular views of turquoise waters, boats and hills! Seconds after we crossed the barrier, a police officer came to look behind the fence. In our imagination, we thought he might have been looking for senior rebels who disobeyed the law.
That evening, we had a lovely dinner of chicken pate and lamb burger in our cozy hotel restaurant. We were giddy and might have seemed like obnoxious Americans.