Day 14. Christchurch NZ. A double dose of culture

Took a rather curious shuttle bus sporting plastic penguins on its roof out to the Antartic centre in the morning.

This is a fascinating place rammed with everything you'd ever need to know about the coldest place on the planet (not Whitley Bay seafront on a December morning apparently).

It manages to combine lots of educational features with a few entertaining diversions. Not least, the resident colony of penguins, which provided the low-brows amongst us with a few laughs.

Undoubted highlight though, was donning some heavy duty anoraks and entering the Antartic storm simulator. 2 minutes at wind chill factor minus 28 and you pretty quickly realise that Scott and Oates were probably not quite the full shilling.

We then visited the City's Modern Art gallery. Housed in a striking building which is a work of art in itself, the collection was just about the right size to hold our goldfish-like attention. Lots of filmic stuff, that was more hit than miss, a particularly clever sculpture made out of old corned beef tins and a few abstract paintings that Wend loved and my dad would've hated.

Stuffed ourselves with some quality nosh in the evening to celebrate our 6 years of wedded bliss.