LATER THAT EVENING

Oh St Clair, with your beautiful surfs and cafes.

Dinner that day was at the Esplanade Restaurant and Bar. We found it by the beach and decided on it because of the view. Food was pretty good and HC loved his lasagna, though I've never quite had aglio olio from a bowl before. It felt a little like eating fried Chinese noodles.

Good night Dunedin. We leave you the morrow.

DUNEDIN, THE NEXT DAY

 

Itinerary for the day (from top):

A little coffee for the time-difference. NZ is five hours ahead of us.

The Olveston House. It's the old voyeur instinct, I love looking at other people's homes.

A short stroll around the oldest university in NZ, the University of Otago. 'Geology' and 'Maori Studies' sounded very interesting indeed.

Lunch break and catching up with some local news.

Cadbury is actually UK and not NZ, but Dunedin has the only Cadbury factory that is open to the public, and because HC loves his discovery channel (see: 'how do they do it?' and 'how stuff works'), we decided to go find out how chocolates are made. Did you know that white chocolates are actually made from cocoa butter which is a kind of fatty oil released from cocoa beans when heated?

FIRST THINGS FIRST

I must confess. I have topped my personal record from here, I shot 21 rolls this time. As I think it will be slightly insane to sift through 750 photos and rearrange them thematically, I have decided to take the easy way out and do it chronologically instead, with perhaps a little running commentary.

The plan was to drive around the New Zealand south island, with a little detour to the country capital on the southern north island (isn't that confusing? but that's what they call it), so we flew in to Christchurch and took a connecting flight to Dunedin on the same day. 

The Dunedin Railway station. Many of the historical buildings are Victorian or Edwardian. Apparently the city has Scottish roots and Dunedin is actually the old Scottish Gaelic name for 'Edinburgh'.

It said, "Not appointed by her majesty, the Queen". I can see why.

We wandered around and found this place called Velvet Burger Respect. HC had the 'hangover cure' which was huge (I didn't know that high calories of bacon, eggs, hash  browns were good for hangovers...?). I had the 'mini brown' beef burger. Pasture-roaming, grass-fed cows really do taste different. Yummy.

An after-dinner drive around the Otago Peninsula. It's late summer so the sun doesn't set until around 9.30pm, which was nice because it even gave us room to factor in some afternoon naps (our way of travel will drive most people crazy I guess) *lol*.

HELLO JIJI #007

She is with good friends now while we are in New Zealand, probably having a whale of a time playing with our friend's cat.

p.s.
The good thing about having an otaku (read: geek) husband is that you don't have to suffer from cyber withdrawal symptoms, they can hook you up literally anywhere. We are in a cafe in Kaikoura waiting for the train now. Lots to chat when we get back. Oh and a scary ton of pictures^^

p.p.s
Sorry I haven't been keeping up with the replies to your comments, will catch up when I get back.

THE DAY I LEFT

I woke up to a cold and foggy Tokyo the day I was to leave. Snow fell in thick clumps, and according to the weather report, 17 days late this year. I had no plans before my afternoon coach to Narita so I sat by my big hotel room window and thought about how much I love snow. It was a lovely end to the trip for me.

Goodbye Tokyo, see you again maybe next year.