5 Top Reasons to Fall in Love with Christchurch

Christchurch was our first stop on the South Island during our three-week New Zealand road trip. We were prepared to embark on two weeks of camping, hiking, and beautiful New Zealand landscapes, so Christchurch was our last chance to explore a city for a while. We honestly hadn’t read too much about it and didn’t know what to expect! We only had one full day in Christchurch before grabbing a rental car and heading south, and in that time we fell so in love with the city we even talked about how easy it’d be to live there. Here are the 5 things we loved most about Christchurch. Hopefully you’ll have as great a time as we did!

1. Our Airbnb

Okay, this doesn’t have to do with the city itself, but it has to be mentioned because it was one of the nicest Airbnbs we’ve ever stayed in, with some of the sweetest hosts. Jo and Lance rent out two rooms in their absolutely gorgeous home (read: mansion) located in the hills overlooking Christchurch. Check out their two listings here. First off, they’re the absolute sweetest couple we met along our travels. Lance offers to pick up guests from the airport for a small added fee, and ended up giving us a ride to the bus stop to get into town the next day too. They gave us the warmest welcome and tour of the place when we arrived. It includes a guest kitchen stocked with breakfast, snacks and cooking items, a gym and movie room open to guests, and the most adorable details in our room like personalized notes and chocolates next to the bed. Secondly, the house is remarkable. The guest area is totally separate from the rest of the house, and is chock full of amazing art — we can only imagine what the rest of the home looks like! The view out the floor-to-ceiling windows over Christchurch was breathtaking, reminding us of the Hollywood hills. You’ll have to weigh your options if you visit Christchurch as you may want something closer to town, but we’re so happy with our choice of Jo and Lance’s place. It felt like a luxury stay before we set off on the camping-heavy part of our trip.

2. A city rebuilt from ruin

Christchurch experienced magnitude 7.1 and 6.3 earthquakes — some of the largest ever recorded in an urban area — just six months apart from one another in 2010 and 2011. 1500 buildings were destroyed, leaving the small city in partial ruin. Visiting seven years later, we were shocked at how much destruction is still visible. The iconic Christchurch Cathedral is still in total disarray and is gated off from the public. Despite so much suffering, the city has rebuilt in truly unique ways. A temporary cathedral was designed and erected from cardboard tubes by disaster architect Shigeru Ban. Re:Start mall was created out of shipping containers, and is now a popular place to visit for its food court and shopping. Murals, graffiti art, and art installations grace so many of the city’s walls and sidewalks, putting ruin and creation side by side. All of the innovative solutions to a terrible natural disaster give Christchurch an artsy and homegrown feeling that we just couldn’t get enough of.

3. Christchurch Botanic Gardens

We’ve visited quite a few gardens in different cities, and to be honest the only reason we decided to check this one out is because there’s no admission fee. We’re so happy we did! The gardens are huge and so beautiful. They include an impressive rose garden, tons of walking paths through native New Zealand foliage, a special exhibit on dahlias when we went, and some of the most beautiful indoor greenhouses that had Sam literally frolicking through flowers. It was a gorgeous Sunday, and families were gathered throughout the gardens for picnics and free live music events. Walking through the gardens with coffee in hand made for a truly wonderful start to the day.

4. Smash Palace

We walked by Smash Palace in the morning and it looked so interesting that we made a note to come back and check it out when it opened later in the day. Our verdict? It’s a biergarten with eclectic vibes (reminding us of ruin bars in Budapest), outdoor seating perfect for a sunny day, good beer and food, cool merch, cool people, and some lowkey killer playlists. We ended up stopping back there a second time when we had a couple hours in Christchurch as our road trip wrapped up.

5. Little High Eatery

Just across Tuam St from Smash Palace is Little High — a modern food court with various locally-owned food stands serving food from around the globe. The options include Thai, Chinese, burgers, wood-fired pizza, Japanese, Mexican, and more. Our favorite was the dumpling sampler platter from Eightgrains. The memory is making our mouths water as we write this! With something for everyone and a cool atmosphere, you really can’t go wrong at Little High.

Dumplings from Eightgrains at Little High Eatery.

Beyond these specific places we enjoyed, we loved how small and walkable Christchurch was. It took us only 25 minutes to walk from end to end within the main city center, allowing us to do our favorite activity of wandering the city on foot all day long seeing everything there is to see.

We met such nice people and visited such cool spots that we still remember our day in Christchurch as one of our favorite days of our entire trip. If you have a chance to visit Christchurch, we highly recommend checking out these recommendations.

Got more Christchurch recs? Leave a comment below on on Instagram!

Happy travels!