Christchurch & Canterbury Tourism, the Regional Tourism Organisation for the Canterbury Region of the South Island of New Zealand.
The third largest in New Zealand with some 380,000 inhabitants – is recovering from what the experts all agree was a unique set of circumstances never before witnessed world-wide in the form of a series of high magnitude earthquakes between September 2010 and June 2011.
It’s important to us that people keep visiting the city – it’s still alive and it’s still beautiful – but you need good reasons to come, and here are some of them.
Visit www.popupcity.co.nz for more details
It’s not allowed to be called a Pop-Up mall because some developers in London got toey about Canterbury using the term, but Re:START is an outdoor retail space consisting of temporary buildings made from shipping containers. It’s in place until Easter 2012, after which the central city will have more permanent rebuilding underway.
The shops (27 and rising) are full of lovely premium fashion, shoes, food and Kiwi-icon based products. The gorgeous retail mix combined with the vibrant exterior colours and the uniformity of shapes makes it not unlike Toytown in a more upmarket dimension. When the mass-plantings of sunflowers come into bloom in a couple of months it will be seriously happy.
Of particular interest: Johnsons Grocery Store (an icon in Christchurch since 1945 specialising in imported yummies from all over the world), Toi Toi and Hapa for fantastic New Zealand memorabilia and gifts, Scorpio books – delicious pages of fiction and information, Hot Damm!’s lingerie, fashion by Trelise Cooper, the diverse range by the Cosmic crew or Maher’s designer shoes … too many to mention them all but after shopping with total commitment, take a load off upstairs in the massive picture window of Hummingbird Coffee Café with a snack or meal and take in the world milling by.
Re:Start is on Cashel Street with great parking, or it’s within easy walk of some of the city’s accommodations, the art gallery, Avon River and visitor centre.
Open 7 days – www.restart.org.nz
