{"id":4771,"date":"2024-10-24T02:30:43","date_gmt":"2024-10-24T01:30:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/hoarde.net\/craigblog\/?p=4771"},"modified":"2024-10-25T08:42:50","modified_gmt":"2024-10-25T07:42:50","slug":"christchurch-to-picton-on-the-coastal-pacific","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hoarde.net\/craigblog\/?p=4771","title":{"rendered":"Christchurch to Picton on the Coastal Pacific"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I slept badly, which wasn’t great. Not entirely sure why, though concern over getting to the station on time probably played a major part.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Christchurch station isn’t in the middle of the town, unlike a lot of others, and the hotel booked a shuttle for me; I’d not realised that the Super Shuttles operation did something other than airport runs. I was concerned because I really wasn’t sure I could rely on them to get me there on time; They’d pushed back the hotel’s original booked time because the station wasn’t open that early, so I was imagining having to run through the station & miss the train because it was cut too close.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It worked out fine in the end, and I had a shitty night of sleep for no reason. Shuttle turned up when it was scheduled, had one other pickup, and then hit every red light between the middle of Christchurch & the Station. Still got there with plenty of time for check-in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For some reason they weigh the bags, like an airline; Maybe because there are baggage handlers who don’t want to deal with someone transporting their brick collection?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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My phone camera doesn’t really capture what wanted to capture of the landscape; For a long while there would be snow-capped mountains off in the distance, even when the train was running near the sea. They vanished as we got further north.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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There’s the open-air carriage, with many many warnings about staying inside the car. Fun, but also cold.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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They came through selling ice-cream at one point.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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And the train passes through a saltworks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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It wasn’t in any way a full train. I had a window seat ( they do assign them ), with nobody else in my row, or the rows in front or behind me, though there was some shuffling around as the trip went on. Some groups got tables, presumably because they were groups?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was a good trip, and a nice way to see the country, and … Better than the bus. Being able to get up & wander around is great.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I slept badly, which wasn’t great. Not entirely sure why, though concern over getting to the station on time probably played a major part. The Christchurch station isn’t in the middle of the town, unlike a lot of others, and the hotel booked a shuttle for me; I’d not realised that the Super Shuttles operation […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[94],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4771","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sabbatical"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3O6N9-1eX","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hoarde.net\/craigblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4771","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hoarde.net\/craigblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hoarde.net\/craigblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hoarde.net\/craigblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hoarde.net\/craigblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4771"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/hoarde.net\/craigblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4771\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4774,"href":"https:\/\/hoarde.net\/craigblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4771\/revisions\/4774"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hoarde.net\/craigblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4771"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hoarde.net\/craigblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4771"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hoarde.net\/craigblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4771"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}