happy anzac day!

what a gorgeous morning! the tops of the mountains are visible today. so now i can say i've seen mt. cook. it would have been sad if i came here and left without seeing it. we went up to the hotel and loaded up on breakfast. i made sure i was full. i was impressed with the section specifically laid out for the japanese tourists. they must get so many of them. they had individual packets of natto (yuck!), miso soup, individual packets of seaweed, tofu cubes, even a few types of furikake! i took a packet of seaweed for the road. technically it was part of the hot breakfast section, therefore off limits to me unless i paid $10 more. however, paying $10 more will mostly entitle me to things i cannot eat (meat, eggs) so it's really not fair for me to pay $10 more just so i can have some miso soup. there was also some tsukemono so i brought a sample back to the table to watch twiddle thumbs's face squirm with the sourness of umeboshi and stuff. damn, i can't eat that stuff anymore either.

mt. cook (aoraki)

after breakfast, we went up to the cafe and used our vouchers to get $20 worth of snacks. i figure we can have them on the bus or as a substitute for lunch. then we took the shuttle bus back to twizel. waited maybe 20-30 minutes for the kiwi bus and went to nearby tekapo for the lunch stop. we were still pretty full from breakfast so we sat outside and had a snack as we read. we quickly decided that it would be better to be out of the sun. we walked around the shops and it was not exciting so we got back on the bus and waited for the journey to continue.

lake tekapo

it was really hot on the bus so it made me sleepy. i think i was conditioned as a child to sleep in cars. i'm pretty sure my mom once said she would drive me around when i was a baby to make me fall asleep. even as an adult, riding in cars just makes me so damn sleepy. somehow, i managed to stay awake long enough to finish reading "firestarter".

we arrived in christchurch and were among the last to be dropped off at our accommodation, foley towers. i'm not sure about this place. we got an en suite room because we just wanted to have our own bathroom for a few days. spoiled by mt. cook and all. *sigh* back to hostels. back to reality. our bathroom smells a little funny. i don't know how many days i can put up with this. none of the bbh hostels are central so it's a hostel dilemma if we were to change. there were no good books at the book exchange that i could see. i overlooked one though because twiddle thumbs picked up another philip k. dick book.

cathedral in the night time

cathedral square in the night time

we called and book to ride the tranz alpine for twiddle thumbs's birthday. it's supposed to be a spectacular train ride. everyone recommends it. we walked around christchurch to check it out. we walked past a cinema and learned that we will miss the latin american film festival. fuck! it's ok though, the films don't look that good. another case of wrong place, wrong time. then we went to the arts centre for dinner at dux de lux. they do seafood and vegetarian. i read somewhere that they are vegan friendly too i think. just in case, twiddle thumbs called and asked if they have any vegan meals. when we got there however, it seemed impossible to find vegan items to eat. it took us forever to order. we kept asking about ingredients and i think the worker was new. he didn't know the answer to anything but he never got frustrated and kept smiling.