London -- Low Maintenance

Forgive me for being off my blog for the past several days. Claire-Adele and I are on a mother-daughter trip to London before she leaves for college in less than a month. When Claire-Adele was ten, she and I made a trip to London. Now, she is eighteen.

What was she most excited about for this trip?

Drinking.

Every night so far, we've had a glass of wine, beer, prosecco, cider or sangria with dinner. As a very lightweight drinker, I am feeling a little sloshed after a week.

"I don't think I'll have an addictive personality," said Claire-Adele. She's probably right, yet there were nights when she drank more than I did. Which means she finished her drink and I didn't.

"I'm going to be responsible," she said as I bought her a 14 pound glass of champagne, hoping this would be a good investment in her learning to control her alcohol at college. Hoping, because if I am wrong, she cold be screwed.

Why did we come here instead of going someplace new? I wrestled with this, and here are my thoughts:

1. It is London. Seriously, how could it be bad? I love big cities.
2. They speak English and the food is predictable.

Most importantly,

     3.  This is an easy planning trip. London is the perfect low-maintenance destination for high maintenance people.

Compare to our two week trip to New Zealand a few years ago. It took us months to plan the logistics of that trip. We stayed (if I am remembering right) seven different towns on two islands -- Auckland, Pohara, some cute spa town with a hot springs water park, Christchurch, Queenstown, Manapouri, and Hamilton. We took three plane rides within New Zealand.

For this trip, all I had to do was book theater tickets (Ham for me, Harry for Claire-Adele), book airline tickets, and find a place to stay. In that order. Done. I was ready. Need to get from destination to destination? Buy an Oyster card for the Underground. Done. Easy-peasey, lemon squeezy.

Jack and I went to brunch last weekend with Carla and her husband who met in London while they were working there.

"What are you going to do while you are there?" she asked.

"I dunno," I said. Then she told me 300 things we could do, and I wrote down about 150 of them. I didn't open a guide book until the third day of our trip. Why? Because there is so much to do here that in Central London you can walk five minutes in any direction and find a castle, palace, museum or place of cultural or historical significance. With the Internet and a printer, you can find train schedules and print tickets for taking tours of Parliament or Bletchley Park.

Plus, Claire-Adele already had a ton of ideas in her mind of what she wanted to see and do, which made my life much easier.

Can you imagine how little I would write if I had to plan a trip, too?

Egads.

Christchurch: What Fell, What Stayed

We visited Christchurch today.  We are staying at my friend Carla's house for one night before we head off to Queenstown tomorrow.  We saw Carla and her family for a few days in Pohara.  I've known Carla for years in Seattle and her husband took a job down here.  It was good seeing her, as I imagined it would be.  It has been about a year since I've seen her.  It seemed as if almost no time had passed since I saw her last.  The hard part was thinking about when I might see her again.

Back to Christchurch.  They had a massive earthquake in 2011.  Carla's husband said it was one of the most violent earthquakes ever, even though it was only 6 on the Ritcher scale.  It was a shallow earthquake, near the surface, and caused a lot of damage.  Much has been cleaned up in the past few years, but I did see a few lots covered in rubble from broken down buildings.  One thing we did miss was watching the rebuilding.  We met a woman in Hanmer Springs who told us the tradesmen have two weeks off around Christmas and New Year's.  It was relatively easy for us to get around.

Carla told us about the container mall downtown.  Almost all of downtown was destroyed, including the shopping.  Several retailers created shops out of shipping containers, like the ones that come in on ships going back and forth from China.

After we visited the Container Mall, we went to the Christchurch Botanic Garden.  I love botanical gardens, from the Missouri Botanic Gardens in St. Louis, to Kew Gardens outside of London.  In Christchurch, the gardens are adjacent to downtown.  It was interesting to see and compared what stayed and what fell.

It struck me that so many trees and plants survived such a horrible earthquake.  I am sure some might have fallen, but many didn't.  Maybe they were lucky to be in the other side of the fault line, or maybe their roots kept them safe.  These trees have likely survived many previous earthquakes. Maybe like when a broken bone heals, trees might also get stronger after an injury.

As they are rebuilding, there is a sense of hope.  I was surprised and happy to see some energy into this devastated part of a town.  And this wasn't the outlying areas -- this was the heart of downtown.  Centers of business, hotels, restaurants, shopping--all gone.  Art brightens the disaster zone.  Like a bud on a flower, these works tell the world the city will bloom again.