Great food in the city with no Restaurants...

It was the last full day with my parents today and we had to get back to Christchurch.

Our packing had become more efficient and even that we had a bit of a lie in we were finished just around check out time.

After a couple of failed attempts in the search of our muffins we found a nice little cafe, where we could sit outside in the sun and enjoy our breakfast.

There was no rush to get anywhere very quickly today, so we took our time and went for another short walk around the forest before getting back in the car and heading for Christchurch.

As we didn't want to spend the afternoon of our last day in the Motel (we prebooked this one - just in case) we didn't go there but drove straight through Christchurch and around the bay along a nice coastal road to a little place called Diamond Harbour where we had some lovely ice cream and enjoyed the last of my views of New Zealand's coast line.

After checking into the hotel doing some repacking for the flight we wanted to head out for some nice dinner. Steak it should be - my treat.

Again, our friend Trip advisor should help and we quickly found the place for the best steaks in town: Bloody Mary's - good name already.

Unfortunately this one was full and there would not be another table free the whole evening.
Second spot we tried was a restaurant called "The Villas" and we did get a nice table there.
It seems to be the case that a quite fancy restaurant, which this was, is not that much more expensive than a normal bar/restaurant here in New Zealand.

Unfortunately the steak was not as good as I had hoped for, but that may have been because it was a rib eye steak on the bone rather than a sirloin or something with out a bone. It was a nice evening nonetheless.

Back at the motel we had to prepare some more things for our splitting up: copy pictures move around stuff but all this was done at some point as well and now we only had to look at some pictures of Vietnam and review the last three and a half weeks together while we removed the last drops of Laphroaig from the bottle.

New Zealand is an amazing place. It is really like the legend says, mad up of different pieces of earth that were left over after forming the other continents. We have seen why the Maori called it "the land of the white cloud" and we pretty much did everything we wanted to do or see at this far, far away place, which we may never get to visit again.

It is a great place and I experienced it together with my parents, that certainly made a different trip than if I would have been here on my own. Certainly a more luxurious way, but also a way that recalled many memories from former holidays.

I am very proud of and thankful for my parents, that they came all the way down to a place that is as far away from home as possible and visit me.

It's great that this worked out so well and Mom was able to train and use her new hip.