New Zealand | Day 1 | Christchurch | Saturday, January 29th, 2011

Well folks, we've arrived.  After a nearly flawless series of flights and a delightful trip through customs (seriously, this was the most cheerful bunch of gov't employees ever) we arrived in Christchurch - ChCh to NZers - at about noon yesterday (Saturday) and rented our car. After getting the GPS hooked up and taking a few deep breaths, I drove us downtown in the right seat of the car and the left side of the road...weird.  We made it to the hotel unscathed, parked, and set off to explore downtown.  We found an awesome pizza place called Winnie Bagoe's and enjoyed a spicy lamb pizza, which our server said was pretty hot (she wasn't lying) and it was awesome.  Upon exiting, we stumbled upon the World Buskers Festival, which is a 10 day exhibition of the world's best street entertainers that takes place annually in locations all over the city...more on that in a bit.

We decided to take a stroll down to the botanical gardens and see what there was to see. It was, of course, gorgeous, and we managed to find a nice outdoor cafe / wine bar to relax and take in the scenery.  It just so happened that there was a Buskers show taking place next door in one of the museum courtyards, so we wandered in to see what was on.  The show openers were a couple we had seen earlier in the park, and after that: Mullet Man. This gentleman put on a hilarious variety show that was punctuated by his flowing mane whipping around as he juggled and eventually mounted a 12-foot tall unicycle during the finale. Needless to say, it was magical (don't worry, we have video, we just can't upload a file of that size today). Unfortunately we had to leave at the end of his act because we were late for our dinner reservation. The culinary awesomeness continued at Cook 'n' With Gas, one of the top restaurants in ChCh. Mussels, lamb, beef, wine...and pavlova, a traditional Kiwi dessert (pictured below).

Somehow, I managed to force it down. By that time it was about 9pm (midnight back home), and we were thoroughly exhausted. We had every intention of heading back to the Buskers, but our beds were calling, and we gladly answered. Tomorrow: road trip.