The botanic gardens were beautiful, but even they didn't escape damage from the earthquake. There were fences and yellow tape everywhere...even a year after the quake! They have had more than 1000 aftershocks since last year and many have been in the fives. The entire downtown was fenced off. We weren't even able to see the famous Christchurch church!
Hotels and restaurants were hard to come by because most were downtown where much of the damage occurred. We lucked out and got into some new Italian restaurant that was seriously amazing. I had a prosciutto, blue cheese and basil pizza. It was seriously to die for!! I have got to figure out how to recreate it!! Our hotel had cracks in the walls, large metal supports throughout and no working elevator. The hotel management assured us that engineers where constantly monitoring and we were safe. Still it was a bit unnerving and think we were all a little relieved once we checked out the next morning.
**A funny side note.....It seems we slept right through an impressive aftershock while we there. Hopefully, we aren't that deep of sleepers and it was just severe travel exhaustion that caused us to be completely ignorant of any shaking.
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