Evening in Christchurch

23 March 2025

We arrived in Christchurch after a long drive from Lake Tekapo. Our accommodation in Christchurch was Argyle On The Park, located next to Hagley Park and Christchurch Botanical Gardens. 

During check-in, our friendly lady host at the motel recommended that we can park our car at the Botanical Gardens or take a walk through the park across the hotel to get to the city centre.

Since it was a nice autumn day, we decided to walk. Hagley Park is the largest urban open space in Christchurch and is quite peaceful in the evening. Riccarton Avenue runs through the park and we used the sidewalk along this road to get to Riverside Market.

On a walking path in Hagley Park.

We spotted some geese along the Avon River just before we entered the city center and into Riverside Market. Our plan was to find somewhere nice for dinner and Riverside Market is an indoor food centre with plenty of food options.

The Riverside Market is an indoor food center with 48 bars, restaurants & stalls from around the world.

After browsing through the stalls with mostly food-court style food, we decided we should treat ourselves to some excellent NZ beef steak at a fancy restaurant on our last evening in New Zealand.

A quick search on Google led us to the Whiskey Fiddle Steakhouse and Whiskey Lounge. We were early for dinner and were probably their first customers for the day. The friendly server was from Malaysia so we struck up an instant rapport. He recommended some nice dishes and drinks. We ordered a Tomahawk steak and a fillet steak, plus cocktails.

Grilled broccolini with garlic butter and potato Gratin as side dishes.

Perfectly cooked, medium rare tomahawk steak.

After the hearty dinner, we wandered around to do some sightseeing and souvenir shopping. There are some nice street art at the car park, next to the Riverside Market.

This is not a 3D structure. The “shadow” is painted on.

The side of this building is flat. It is painted to look like a 3D facade. 
Bridge of Remembrance.

On our way back, we walked through the Christchurch Botanical Garden. Entry to the gardens is free. The gardens are divided into different sections, including themed gardens, conservatories, and peaceful walking trails along the Avon River. At this time of day, we were the only folks in the garden . The gardens span an area of 21 hectares but we only saw the displays that were on the direct route to our hotel. We enjoyed the scenic views and walking paths alongside the Avon River.

The planting in the colourful flower beds will be changed accordingly to the seasons.

In particular, we saw the dahlia garden, rose garden, and the World Peace Bell.

       Peaceful walking trails in the Botanical Garden. 

A row of hydrangea bushes.

The colour of the Hydrangea flowers can range from blue to pink, depending on the PH levels of the soil.

World Peace Bell - a symbol of peace located in Christchurch.

We saw many colourful dahlias just outside the Rose Garden. Inside the Rose Gardens were roses of many colours as well.

Dahlia Garden.

Entrance to the Rose Garden.

It was almost dark when we arrived back at our hotel. We were just in time to escape the darkness and light rain that started just as we were outside our hotel.

Overall, we had a relaxing evening exploring a bit of Christchurch on the last day of our 11 days road trip before flying home the next day.