Christchurch

The weather is cold, blustery, with light rain off and on. So, The mountains are even more overcast, so I would not have been able to see much from the train anyway until I got to the west coast. Perhaps for the best.

Walked around a bit, and thought I could relay some local info.

Pharmacies are "Chemist".

At major downtown intersections, when the pedestrian light and signal go on, you can walk every direction, even the two diagonals.

A light switch in the up position is off, down is on. And, the wall outlets each have 2 switches for on/off of the individual outlets. Took me a while to figure that one out...

Have seen only one American-made car so far, a Ford European fake SUV of some sort. Most are Honda, Toyota, Nissan, Mitsubishi.

The toilets have 2 buttons. One for a small flush, one for a large flush.

In the downtown area, there are electric trolleys like this one photographed from the sitting room of our B&B:


Christchurch has a very British look and feel, as intended, but in a strange sort of way, because nothing is much more than 100 years old - not much older than the towns in the Midwest of the U.S.

I'm packed and organized. I'm going to try to go out for a dinner at a nice restaurant, and then hit the hay. I start for the U.S. tomorrow morning, so you probably won't see a post from me until I'm home on Thursday.