Day 31 Feb 4 (Christ Church) (Monday)

Breakfast on Lido. 10:15 Shuttle to town. Walked around taking some pics of downtown cathedral and park. Walked to what used to be Canterbury College around the turn of the last century (1900). The college has moved but they have an arts center there now and they preserved a small part of the old college because it was connected to Ernest Rutherford (This one is for you Richard and Christie too). Rutherford was a name well known to me from my days as a physics instructor. I confess that if I ever knew he was from New Zealand I had forgotten. When I read that he was memorialized here I had to pay the place a visit. A sort of Physics pilgrimage I suppose. Anyway, they have preserved a few rooms of the old college where he studied and did some of his early experiments. I learned much more about him than I ever learned majoring in physics in college or teaching physics. He is really the father of nuclear physics and even did some experiments which are the basis for modern day smoke detectors! Who knew??? Anyway, he won a Nobel Prize (as so often is the case it was not for his most important work in retrospect but a Nobel Prize is a Nobel Prize right?

So that was cool (for me). Then I stopped at an indoor/outdoor cafe which was part of the art center for lunch. I was warned not to feed the sea gulls. (I chose to sit outside under a canopee despite a slight drizzle from time to time (this is the first time I needed my umbrella on a shore day). So of course I disregarded the advice. I had this one gull shouting at me so I held out a piece of the pastry which was wrapped around the meat portion of my sausage roll lunch. The gull flew down to a nearby table and I tossed the piece to it. He caught it mid-air. Then I told him, "off you go" and he went. Works on gulls too Scott and Tara! He (could really have been a she I suppose) was a well behaved gull. I also offered my plate crumbs to the sparrows who were gathering. I had been told they could be coaxed to eat from my hand but decided I would save that for the pigeons in St. Marks Square in Venice later. I mean, I hardly knew these sparrows. The pigeons at St. Marks are old friends.

Well, that's about it. I'm back to watching the Super Bowl. There are 3 minutes left in the 3rd Quarter and I think this might be fun. Cheers to all. We go to Dunedin tomorrow so I'll try to catch you up after that. The following day we go to the fiords of New Zealand so it could be a couple of days.

Bye now.