Christchurch to Perth via a day trip to Sydney

So we managed to get out of Christchurch after our shaky night and our next stop was Sydney where we had the day to explore. Tim had never been to Sydney and as we were going via there thought it would be a great opportunity to spend the day there. Albeit we were exhausted after a sleepless night we did our best to keep busy. We checked our bags in for our return flight to Perth and just put a couple of small bags in a locker then caught the train into Circular Quay to see the Opera House and all the other sights. There was a massive cruise ship in the docks so that was an amazing sight and the Sydney Harbour bridge is amazing.  We spend a few hours around there then had a walk up Pitt street and had a look at the shops and then headed back to Circular quay.

Franz Josef to Christchurch

We left Franz Josef on Saturday morning and it had been raining all night but was only drizzling for most of our drive back to Christchurch via Arthur's Pass. Made it in good time and arrived at our accomodation about 1.30pm at Amore Motel. Unpacked and there was a huge Westfield shopping centre down the road so went and explored that. The next day we went into Christchurch to have a look around at all the damage from the 2011 earthquake which looked like it had just happened yesterday as there was still so much damage and buildings boarded up and the church in the middle occupied by pigeons and held up by big metal support beams. Very sad. We got on a tram which we thought would be interesting $25 each and that was a bit of a waste of money. So that night we went to the movies and saw The Accountant - awesome movie and then we thought we better go to bed about 10.30 as had to be up at 4.00am. There was some noisy neighbours which Tim was not happy with and then at 12.00pm we were awoken by the bed head shaking and the wardrobe doing a crazy dance and I thought either the neighbours were really having a good time or Tim had got so cranky with them that he was shaking our bed head but none of the above - we were in our own earthquake 7.2 on the richter scale!!!! We chucked some clothes on and rushed outside into the carpark as we were on the bottom floor of a 2 storey motel. Everyone was out in the carpark and the ground was still rolling. What a surreal feeling that is. So that went on for a few minutes and then seemed to stop but we had several after shocks so it was back out to the carpark so not a lot of sleep was achieved. We were worried that maybe the planes would not fly but we headed out to the airport anyway and luckily flights were still happening.