Town of the Red Headed Kiwi Scotsmen

Day 5 Dunedin 19 September 19, 2010

(Town of the Red Headed Kiwi Scotsmen)

Today was a fairly low key day with no driving but catching up on washing and relaxing. Girls even had a swim in the heated pool at the van park. Our campervan experience has been OK certainly with its advantages and disadvantages. Advantages have been not actually living out of a suitcase as we could unpack a fair bit of our everyday clothes and put them into cupboards in the van. We have eaten fairly cheaply as we grocery shop buy easy cook meals, soups, have bread for toast, beans spaghetti, coffee etc. Generally one purchased meal a day either a brunch or a ‘lea’. Tonight we were craving for protein and found a pub/tavern and had ‘Stone Grill’ steak. As it turned out they brought the raw steak to your table on a hot volcanic rock and you cooked it your table.(see photo) We have started using Top Ten Van Parks and two out of two have been great. Wonderful facilities, clean, pretty setting usually edge of town, quiet and friendly helpful service.

Disadvantages we have found are maneuvering of a 6.5 metre monstrosity difficult and where ever possible we have parked and walked to where we want to go, very compact and hard to store luggage at night and there is only four belts two in front and two in the back so no easy options to separate the girls WHEN the niggle each other.

The morning was a restful start as we explored the Van Park. The Van Park has a “community park” level of gardens in it for all to enjoy it also doubles as privacy for the many van and camping options powered and unpowered. The girls discovered two of the Van Park’s six resident cats during “our explore” which were well received by both the girls and the cats. At noon we headed into the city by taxi, to explore the sights of Dunedin. The city was a gold mining town in the mid 19^th century, and much of the wealth reflects in the period buildings. The craftsmanship, decoration and stone durability of the old buildings illustrates the level of wealth that was found in the old city. The Scottish miners also built many grand mid to late Victorian era mansions, houses and cottages of which many remain today. The city is home to many period churches, built on street corners. The streets are built on a series of hills leading down into the coastal bay. The city did have a feel of the old world and east coast United States. We noticed that many of the Scotts remained, given the large number of strawberry blondes and red heads we saw in the streets. A very friendly city of 130000 people (including the 25000 uni students) who live in the city.

The girls have been tantalized by our poking our nose in the Cadbury Factory today while we checked out the tour information. That is our priority tomorrow.