Its been a while since I posted about Christchurch, so I'll talk about a less exciting but relaxing place to be in called Sumner, because me and the Hiiragi sisters so happened to end up here after getting lost for a while. If you think that you're tired of a place that has too much to see, come here and relax yourself. Its actually also a beach, so you can dip your legs in the icy water and enjoy yourself in the freezing pacific breeze.

First of all, I'd like to emphasize that this beach is really just beach. Just sand and rocks, and some boats. A lot of people come here though, so its not my favorite beach. Couples enjoy sitting at the rocks while the Antarctic winds chill them. But it does make you feel really relaxed and ponder about how worthwhile modern life is.

Some very cool rocks with mold growing on them.

Kagami enjoys looking into the distance.

Because this beach is really a very large field of wet sand inside a bay bordering the sea, the most interesting things besides the sky here are the rocks. Here we see the formation that was in front of Kagami in the previous photo.

We enjoyed ourselves chatting and making up lame jokes. The air was sitting at single digit temperatures, but it was really refreshing for some reason.

We even saw little roses buried in the sand.

This is actually the north end of the beach. I loathe the south end because its just packed with people and cars. Its essentially an esplanade with a parking lot, beach and just so many people and their dogs.

The south end has a proper carpark, but you can park on the roadside here at the north end...

... and walk down the stairs to the beach.

There's some colorful vegetation up here too.

Deeper into the bay is an estuary, with a LOT of birds. They aren't afraid of humans because its illegal to kill them. So I get to come really close to take pictures.

But they also have a sense of "personal space", so they tend to walk away when either me or Kagami get too close.

About 10 minutes from the end of the beach is Sumner town, which has shops that support the local population.

Cool ad.

There's also junk just lying outside shops that make them look cute, but serve no functional purpose.

We also noticed a cool little lot where they train young sailor cadets.

They had a cool cannon.

Kagamin reenacting the pose of the French captain at the helm of warships coming to the aid of settlements in the American Revolution.

Further along one can see boats anchored in the shallow bay waters.

There's a yachting club here. Maybe I should get a boat someday... it looks like fun

Today's overcast, so there wasn't really any sun to speak of.

Boats on their keels.

People buy land along the slopes of the mountain facing the beach and build their houses to see the great view of large masses of water from their balconies. I'd really like a place like this too, but its so expensive.

But the kind of living probably makes it all worth it.

It would also be so swell to be able to just come downstairs and ride my boat out for fun with Kagami.

There is a long walkway extending from the end of the beach all the way to the town, so a lot of people from the town jog down to the beach via this walkway.

On overcast days the sky just looks so low.

Interesting bulbous plants. You'd never notice these amongst the bright colors of spring and summer.

There's also a small playground nearby with interesting courses.

Metal ball is very interesting.

One of the interesting things about this city is on certain days you see a lot of these colorful bins outside every house. The council gives three bins to every house, one red, one green and one yellow for them to separate their unrecyclable rubbish, organic rubbish and recyclables in to the bins respectively. The green one gets collected every week, while the red and yellow get collected on alternate weeks.

There was a cake store too, and with lemon cake.

I couldn't resist. So me and the sisters chilled out there for a while. It was actually also an art gallery, so we had a chance to see some swell oil paintings that were so realistic they were selling in the thousands.

Soon it was getting dark, because it was winter the sun sets early in the day, so we decided to head home.

written by astrobunny \\ ball, beach, bins, boat, cake, cannon, christchurch, coffee, hiiragi, kagami, metal, playground, polarizing filter, rocks, sail, sand, seagulls, sky, sumner, tsukasa, yacht