Sunday in NZ

Twelve miles…that’s how far I rode a bike today. I’m sure I’m not right on the money with the distance, but my butt confirms that 12 miles is about right! Greg and I rode our bikes to the Botanical Gardens today. It was beautiful. All of the Spring flowers are in bloom; tulips, daffodils, trees. It rained yesterday and the temperature dropped a bit so some of the flowers were struggling but for the most part all were gorgeous. Today’s weather was perfect in my opinion. A nice ‘crisp’ day, probably in the 50’s, enough for a fleece jacket, scarf & gloves. I think everyone in Christchurch was at the gardens today. It was fun to watch all the children run around as if it this was the greatest day of their life. Spring has sprung here in New Zealand…baby ducks were in every pond, the signs of new life were abundant everywhere you turned. After the gardens, we headed towards the city centre. On our way, we found a festival outside of the Art Museum. Many vendors around the courtyard with handmade goods from New Zealand. I regret I didn’t buy anything now, it’s was just so difficult to buy something and worry about how to get it home. As we were parking I was stopped by a man that was doing a performance. A comedian that liked to use the audience in his performance. He stopped my bike and started washing it for me with is handkerchief then he jumped on it and took off! He quickly returned and showed some promise so we sat and watched his show. I don’t recall his name but he was a good performer. At one point he started putting rubber bands all around his face. By the end of this phase of the performance I would venture to guess that he had about 20 rubber bands all over his face/head. It really looked painful but also silly as his face was completely contorted! It reminded me of all those poor little babes that I have put rubber bands around their heads in order to start an IV. This guy was doing it on purpose for pure entertainment value! His next performance was to have someone put a straight jacket on him. Two volunteers from the audience then placed him on a pogo stick, they let go and the game was on. In about 5 minutes, he had completely removed the straight jacket all while jumping up and down on a pogo stick! Not a bad performance! It was neat to watch this guy he lured in an audience and by the time he was finished the whole sidewalk, courtyard and street was focused on him. He loved his ‘job’ and it was apparent. The arts & crafts were neat…a lot of wool scarves/hats, jewelry, knitted sweaters, dresses etc. In my opinion, every good festival should have good festival food and this one certainly did! Festival food from all around…Korean, Japanese, Chinese, Lebanese, Greek, German…the only thing that was missing was funnel cakes! We stuffed ourselves with junk and rode our bikes around the city centre. The ride back to the hotel wasn’t so bad, we figured out the shortcuts and made it back fairly quickly. Tonight we had Italian for dinner at a restaurant in the city centre called Portofino. I was craving some wine (when am I not craving wine?). I had tortellini con zucca (pumpkin). It was delicious! The restaurant was neat, we laughed that the manager looked like he was with the Mafia.