We made it to ChCh on the 8th and we were planning to eat lunch at a nice restaurant, it being my birthday and all. So we picked one out of the guidebook, programmed the address into the Garmin, and set out. We didn’t make it.
As you may remember, in February of this year, a magnitude 6.3 earthquake hit the central business district and wreaked havoc on the buildings. The whole of downtown is still fenced off and access is controlled to prevent looting and anyone getting hurt by falling debris. 
We walked around the fence surveying the damage for ourselves. The Westin was crack down the center and coming apart at the top. Windows were shattered and the glass still on the ground at a Chinese restaurant. Flowers and little trinkets were still hung in the fences that surrounded homes where people had died when their walls and roofs collapsed on them while they slept.
The worst damaged were the churches all throughout the city. Old stone and brick buildings that house large halls for worship service lack the inner walls that support the structure. Even far outside the CBD, where no other buildings were touched, the churches fell in.
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| The steeple has been set aside, presumably to be saved. There were several instances of this throughout ChCh. |
As we tried to do the things that were on our list to do, we kept finding that the restaurants we wanted were in the red zone. The carve-your-own souvenir place was leveled. It was depressing, so we moved on.
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