Annoyingly, our motel was all booked up by a large group of bikers and they woke up around 7 am this morning to get going early waking the whole motel up

Nevermind – we actually have to get going around 8 am anyways!

We ready ourselves with a quick bit of toast for breakfast in the room and then get on the road to Culverden to get coffee from Red Post Cafe

Carrying on the route, we have a brief stop to get petrol just before dropping the car off back in Christchurch at the EZU Car Rental office

Everything’s good with the car and we’ve completed 745 kilometres for this road trip

The rental company gives us a ride to the airport where we collect Daisy’s parents who have just arrived for a holiday

With all of our bags, we get back to the rental car shuttle pick up and are taken to another rental car company

This one has a few issues with the booking but we eventually get out and on the road about 1.5 hours later to check into Tuscana Motor Lodge

After dropping bags, we mosey into town to get coffee and small lunch from Coffee Lovers while admiring a few trams passing

We then walk through to see the tram starting point, Christchurch Cathedral and some graffiti

Continuing on, we head over to check out the Avon River, running through the centre of the city, where we get a sighting of several long finned eels and scaup ducks

Next to here is the Riverside Market which has many of its Chinese NY decorations still up – we wander through and have a pitstop pint, from Canterbury Brewers Collective

Following this, we have a wander around the block to have a go at The Victoria Pub & Dining Rooms for another drink – we manage to get a nice row of seats out the front to enjoy people watching

As it gets to around 6 pm, we all get a bit peckish and decide to go to where we’ve booked for dinner, ZODIAC

We see if they’ll have us earlier than the reservation – they can and we get tucking into a feast for four

A beef cheek penang curry, chilli prawns, sung choi bao of pork (pork lettuce wraps) and a cashew and duck stir-fry with a Tiger beer each

For an end-of-the-night tipple, we pop to Fat Eddie’s, which is basically above ZODIAC, to share a bottle of The Ned sauvingnon blanc with some live music before walking back to motel