Exploring Christchurch on Foot

The day started with a long stroll through Hagley Park and the Botanic Gardens. The scenery seemed ever so familiar such that I strangely felt like being at six different places at once: I walked across Parker’s Piece in Cambridge, Queen’s Park in Toronto, breathed in the crisp spring air in immaculately kept gardens in Cornwall, traversed the river Avon in Stratford (and could have gone punting!), marvelled at university buildings in Toronto, Oxford and Cambridge. Moreover, the street names reverberated the British heritage everywhere: Oxford / Gloucester / Worcester Street, Cambridge Terrace, to name just a few. It was the Gardens’ section “New Zealand Gardens” which reminded me that I was, in fact, in New Zealand, not in Great Britain nor in Canada.