Ah, Dunedin
I don't know how it's possible, but every place we visit in NZ is prettier than the last. Dunedin is now the jewel in the crown. We just love it here!
It's picture postcard beautiful, with towering hills, the salty tang of the ocean air, and friendly people like everywhere in NZ.
Walter and Jennifer, our friends in Dunedin whom we met 1 1/2 years ago in Beijing, took us on a tour of the city.
We saw Baldwin Street which only in recent years was discovered to be the steepest street in the world. It has a gut busting 26.6% gradient. By no coincidence, this is also the name given to the annual race from bottom top. We didn't even attempt to drive up it. I was afraid the car would summersault backwards.
Then on to a a tour of the Otago University campus. It is the premiere university in NZ for medicine and dentistry and a degree from here is respected throughout the world.
We wandered past the train station, built from local cream and grey rock that looks a little like our sandstone (only different colour). The station recently underwent an exterior cleaning from 150 years of accumulated dirt and today, its splendid architectural detail is clearly visible. It's no longer used as a passenger train station. Instead, today there was a wedding reception happening inside.
We drove between the pounding ocean surf on one side and a velvety green golf course on the other, then watched a lone player as he skipped his ball over a water hazard and landed it on the green. Cool shot!
Walter drove us to the hills for a top notch, literally, view of Dunedin. Even under a grey sky the ocean looked appealing, breaking around a small rocky knoll not far offshore.
Dunedin is a city of about 100,000, maybe a tad more, but gives the appearance of being much larger because it sprawls over the hills. It's incredibly beautiful and so far, this is my favourite place but evidently Gerladine, on the way to Christchurch, is even lovlier. But Geraldine will have to wait for our next trip.
On our return, Walter and Hans finished off the good scotch, and then tasted one called, improbably, Glen Campbell.
It's picture postcard beautiful, with towering hills, the salty tang of the ocean air, and friendly people like everywhere in NZ.
Walter and Jennifer, our friends in Dunedin whom we met 1 1/2 years ago in Beijing, took us on a tour of the city.
We saw Baldwin Street which only in recent years was discovered to be the steepest street in the world. It has a gut busting 26.6% gradient. By no coincidence, this is also the name given to the annual race from bottom top. We didn't even attempt to drive up it. I was afraid the car would summersault backwards.
Then on to a a tour of the Otago University campus. It is the premiere university in NZ for medicine and dentistry and a degree from here is respected throughout the world.
We wandered past the train station, built from local cream and grey rock that looks a little like our sandstone (only different colour). The station recently underwent an exterior cleaning from 150 years of accumulated dirt and today, its splendid architectural detail is clearly visible. It's no longer used as a passenger train station. Instead, today there was a wedding reception happening inside.
We drove between the pounding ocean surf on one side and a velvety green golf course on the other, then watched a lone player as he skipped his ball over a water hazard and landed it on the green. Cool shot!
Walter drove us to the hills for a top notch, literally, view of Dunedin. Even under a grey sky the ocean looked appealing, breaking around a small rocky knoll not far offshore.
Dunedin is a city of about 100,000, maybe a tad more, but gives the appearance of being much larger because it sprawls over the hills. It's incredibly beautiful and so far, this is my favourite place but evidently Gerladine, on the way to Christchurch, is even lovlier. But Geraldine will have to wait for our next trip.
On our return, Walter and Hans finished off the good scotch, and then tasted one called, improbably, Glen Campbell.
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charlie