Another beautiful day, and a gorgeous sail in to Dunedin this morning. 

We had a little bit of a dilemma trying to decide if we wanted to try to take the local bus into town or the expensive shuttle.  The shuttle won out, particularly because we can pay by credit card and don’t have to worry about finding an ATM right away.  Also, both Jessica (the Princess port/excursion girl) and a couple of blog posts we’ve seen cautioned us that sometimes the local bus won’t stop at the Port bus stop if they see a lot of people there.  So, expensive shuttle it is!

We are one of the first off, who’s surprised? But since we actually arrived about 30 minutes early, the shuttles aren’t there yet.  Plus there is a lot of roadwork going on, so the scheduling is a little tough to time right.  We spent a delightful time talking to one of the I-site girls (who were helping to coordinate the shuttle) about Dunedin and Auckland, where she is originally from.  She told us how bad the floods were there but that she had heard from her friends and family that they had begun to recede and things were slowly getting better.  Nice to know since Jessica didn’t know how the floods would affect our arrival there in 4 days.

Once the shuttles arrive, we leave pretty quickly, enjoying the beautiful drive all along the waterfront, arriving in town after a modicum of traffic for the roadwork.  From the shuttle stop in the middle of the CBD, we head off for our Stevens designed walking tour.  Hitting the ATM along the way, we head out of the CBD to the Botanical Garden on the north side of town.  It is a long, but merciful flat walk, through the CBD, and obviously along the “motel” road.  It is one of the main thoroughfares though Dunedin, but there is nothing here except hotels, motels and we’re guessing short term rentals. Sort of weird in the conformity.

We finally reach the gardens, and strike off on the river path which will take us along the outskirts of the garden and to the visitors’ center which has a café that should be open.  The river – while more like a stream at this point – is so pretty with the hanging foliage, beautiful flowers and ducks floating all around.  The café, when we arrive, is just opening, and we manage to snag a table by the window to enjoy our cappuccino while staring out at the river and the rest of the gardens that are rising above us on the hillside.

Oh the hillside.  While the river walk was mostly flat, the rest of the garden is definitely not!  We make a decision to brave the hike and head out of the café and up into the garden in search of the Aviary.  This is a work out, let me tell you. A very worthwhile workout, but phew.  The views are fabulous as we make our way up and some of the trees!  Huge and tall with roots that look like the Harry Potter whomping willow.  So great.

And our reward?  An amazing aviary. Oh the birds! Beautiful and fabulous. There are some incredible species here.  Many quite photogenic as you will see!  But, while beautiful and exotic, boy are they loud!  Some of the bigger birds are being fed as we watch and they are going crazy flying all over their cage and screaming at the top of their little bird lungs.  Yikes.

From the Aviary, we tried to find the New Zealand section, but somehow the trails all wound back to a parking lot.  So we reversed our course, but instead of going back down the way we had come, we found the Volcano trail – which I had wanted to do, but didn’t think we could because all the descriptions of it said it was steep and arduous.  Because we were already up top on the hillside, it wasn’t bad at all.  The main part of the walk was actually pretty flat with great sightlines down to the duck pond and out over the suburbs of Dunedin.  Coming down from the view point was another story!  Wow, yep, that was steep!  And all gravel.  We were very glad we didn’t try to walk up that way – down was hard enough.

Back at sea level, we walked back into town, visiting the Otago museum which had interesting exhibits about the Otago area (which is where we are) and the people who populated the region. It is a really fascinating museum, filled with interesting information about the Maori culture.   There were also excellent exhibits on other indigenous people throughout the Pacific islands, such as Cook Islands, Fiji, etc.  So many things captured our interest.  The masks, made from ceramic and natural material, that were just intricate and creepy at the same time.  The wood carvings.  The dog tooth necklace – yes dog teeth.  How many dogs did they have to kill (and eat, btw) to make that thing?  Same with the porpoise tooth necklace.  Same with the earrings.  Ick.  But, that’s what we are here for – to learn about different cultures, and boy are we learning! 

Upstairs there was also an “animal room” which was actually a huge attic room filled with taxidermized animals.  Not so fabulous.  Sort of boring actually, especially because they were just weird choices for the animals of New Zealand.  Anyway, we didn’t stay there long, but did hang out a bit around the crocodile in the middle of a display with whom Sunny actually played. If you can call almost being eaten “playing” that is.

Now it is time for lunch.  Instead of the traditional Speights Brewery lunch (which we’ve actually only done once, but we thought twice), we decide to head to Emersons Brewery, which is a nice walk and has a great outdoor deck.  Sitting ourselves in as much shade as we can find (the sun is brutal out here – as in really strong and really hot!), we dig into way too much food. And way too much badness!  An entire bowl of smokey flavored French fries.  A bowl!  It was so huge, we thought for certain there was a false bottom, but no.  We dug all the way down at it was all French fries.  Far more French fries than any 2 humans could eat! Then there was the salt and pepper calamari – excellent.  But the star of the day were the goat cheese croquettes, drizzled with honey. To die for.   All in all excellent, but a lot of food.  We’re stuffed.  On the way out, in their lobby, we stopped to admire their “minibar.”  An old Mini that they had converted into a bar with kegs inside and taps in the trunk.  Too cool!

Heading back toward the main part of town, we meandered over to the grocery store, passing the big construction site that used to be the Cadbury factory. Boo hoo. The factory closed in 2018/19 and they are building a hospital there now. We were so sad. It was a great place to visit – and the chocolate like nothing we have in the states. Ah well, at least they are building something worthwhile in its place. 

We enhanced our stock at the store with more instant coffee (we have a kettle in the room, so coffee every morning at our own speed and on our own schedule) and chocolate Covered almonds (on sale).  And no, we didn’t buy it, but they had DIY beer mixes.  What even are those?  We have no idea, but sorely wanted to try them…except we aren’t carrying those big boxes or canisters home.  But what an idea!

Next up, we visited the Otago Settlers museum which was huge!!!  Everything from Maori to James Cook to present day. Really neat. But slightly overwhelming.  The museum stretches on and on and on – and at the end there is a great old tram display – which Ed really enjoyed.  As well as an old huge tricycle bike like they used to ride around in earlier times. 

After the museum, we tried to go to the Japanese gardens, but didn’t realize they cost.  And a pretty penny at that.  So, we nixed that and struck out into the town to find the street art.  Jessica had mentioned it, and I had also seen mention of it online as well but couldn’t really find a decent map. Luckily, while at the museum, I managed to download a pdf map and we were off.  There are almost 30 murals across the southern part of the city, and we found almost all of them.  Totally neat stuff. And it was so fun trying to find them, like a scavenger hunt!  We think we did pretty good finding about 25 – plus other great murals and alleys with artwork (check out the 404 not found mural!) along the way.

But, that was hard hot work – so of course, we needed a beverage to celebrate our finds and to cool down.  Figured it was only right to have our last beverage at Speights, the oldest brewery in Dunedin. 

A fitting end to our explorations, we head back to the shuttle, passing the Cargill Monument, named after the founder of Dunedin, arriving at the shuttle stop just as one was getting ready to pull out.  Perfect timing.

Back on the ship, we made our rounds, they gym, our afternoon drink, then back to the cabin for a gorgeous sailaway.

Our evening consisted of dinner (of course) and then to the comedian’s 2nd show – which was hysterical.  We sat at the back so we could sneak out to go to the main show in the theater, a comedy magician, who was surprisingly good and entertaining. Then a nightcap on the balcony and off to bed. 

Tomorrow is Christchurch – with pretty much the same itinerary! LOL.