I keep ending up in Lyttelton

So Saturday was a bit of a bust in regards to what i was planning to do. This was to take the Diamond Harbor Ferry to...well, Diamond HArbor, as well as visit the Lyttelton museum and the Lyttelton torpedo boat museum. The Diamond harbor ferry turned out to be a little bit more expense than I was expecting, so I decided to leave it to another time. The Lyttelton Museum wasn't open, so I decided to go to the Lyttelton torpedo boat thing. After getting lost several times (including once when I found myself walking on an abandoned rail line toward an industrial complex) I finally found it: 30 minutes out of town and costing $2, it turned out to be tiny, with one room with the remains of two of the torpedo boats (like primitive subs) that New Zealand had built at the turn of the twentieth century (after all, Russia had taken the Crimea, so obviously New Zealand was next). After that whole mess, I walked back into town to go to the Lyttelton museum. This was basically just the place where various townmembers had donated various things to a town collection: stuff that had washed ashore from shipwrecks, souveniers people had brought back from all around the world, models of famous ships, old uniforms and medals. It was an odd mix, but it was kind of sweet in its own way.

Today I got up very early in order to take advantage of the Grand Tour ticket I had gotten (I think from IES, but it might have been Ilam Village). This was a tour around Christchurch by bus, put together by the Christchurch Tramways, the people who own the Christchurch tram, as well as the Christchurch Gondola and the Punting on the Avon. The bus went to each of these locations, as well as a few others, whilst the driver told us about Christchurch. He must have been an architechture student at one time, because he commented a lot on the styles of the buildings we passed. We say Mona Vale (a beautiful garden in the middle of Christchurch), went punting on the Avon (punting is the English version of gondoliering, with a slightly different boat-- the punter of my boat was a Chilean who told the Australians also in my boat about how he wanted to go to Australia), saw the Sign of the Takahe (an elaborate hotel and restaurant that looks like a castle constructed by a crazy guy who went broke buidling it), went up in the Gondola (like last time, it was sadly foggy at the top), went to Sumner Beach for lunch (I had Szchewan Beef of questionable quality) then went back to the Cathedral Square, where I used a tram ticket the driver of the bus had given me to take the Tram around the center of town, then around again until it got in front of the Art Gallery, where i got off and looked at the artwork (which was mostly modern and some of which was actually kinda cool-like the strips of color all around the second floor balcony that apparently represented the flags of the world with their identifying characteristics removed. All in all, a nice day, even tho I was kinda tired by the beginning of it.

So I will try to write about either the Bromeliad trilogy (already finished one of the books and am moving thru the second one) or what I thought of the Year's Best Fantasy and Horror. On Tuesday IES is having a pre-Rarotonga meeting, if anything cool happens there I'll report on it. Next weekend is Armageddon Expo, a scifi/anime/comic/general nerdiness convention, which I'm kinda excited for (never been to a con before). Anyways, see y'all later!