Dunedin still

After a very wet night - and feeling ever more grateful that we weren't stuck outside in the tent - we woke up to something in Dunedin that we hadn't seen before: sunshine! Pausing only long enough to cook ourselves some tasty and filling omelette for breakfast, we packed up maps and cameras and headed out for the day. Dunedin in the sunshine is a lot more pleasant than Dunedin in the pouring rain, that's for sure. Although the hills were just as steep, at least we had a good view over the city from the tops of them! It wasn't long before we were walking from the central Octagon down an extremely long street heading out of the city to the Botanical Gardens. We were very lucky to have such nice weather for a walk through the gardens, and we spent quite a long time enjoying the different areas such as the herb garden and the plants from different parts of the world. It was a pleasant surprise to see a sign in the herb garden suggesting that we pull off leaves to smell and/or taste the different herbs - back in the UK you probably would have been chucked out of the park for such a wanton act of vandalism! We also enjoyed walking up the higher areas of the gardens with a view over the city. It was fun to watch the cars away over on the far hill, seemingly driving straight up into the air. The streets here really are VERY steep, and I don't understand how anyone copes in snowy or icy weather.

After the gardens, we spent a good hour in the Otago Museum which was on our way back into town. As well as standard museum stuff, it had a really interesting maritime area, with models of different ships and a history of what they had been involved in, such as the evacuation from Dunkirk, which Skry really enjoyed. My favourite part was the Animal Attic, which is full of bones and stuffed animals laid out in the same style that the Victorians would have used. In fact a few of the mammals were suffering from faded fur because the Victorians had no lighting in the museum apart from the skylights, and the animal exhibit was right at the top so all the sunlight fell straight on them. It was only in later years that they blocked out the skylights, floored the central area of the building, and added artificial lighting. Anyway, the stuffed animals were interesting, disturbing, cute, disfigured, scary, or in some cases most of the above. I liked the lion best - I was crouching on the floor imagining that it was attacking me, and how scary that would be. Don't ask me why, but it amused me! From there, we made a quick trip to see the train station, which has a very ornately designed and tiled building (apparently Royal Doulton made the floor tiles for them) and then on for dinner.

Our last evening in Dunedin was spent watching films on the laptop in our cabin. We watched the most recent Harry Potter film and then the start of Ratatouille, and we're saving the rest of that for tomorrow because it was getting late. I'm so glad that I took the laptop with me, but we have watched nearly everything I have already. Time to join a film library!