Christmas Vacation - Part VI: Otago

We made it - seven posts and one month after our return, the final Christmas Vacation post is here!

We left Akaroa well-rested and looking forward to spending a few days heading South toward our final destination - Dunedin. Dunedin has a whopping 126,000 people, over 20% of whom are students at the University of Otago, so it has a bit of a college town vibe - but in the best way possible! But more on that later....

Our first stop was the town of Ashburton, home to the world's most famous spinning wheels. I don't spin (don't have the hands for it), but they had plenty of other goodies for me to check out - along with a cafe for Rob to hang out in while I browsed.

I have been waiting to go here since we moved to New Zealand - it's pretty magical!

The drive to Dunedin was 6 hours, so we decided to break it up and spend a night in Oamaru (population 13,650). Oamaru is famous for its Blue Penguin colony, its Whitestone Cheese Factory and for being the Steampunk capital of New Zealand.  We had our fill of penguins in Pohatu, so headed to the Steampunk HQ, which was odd, to say the least.

Outside of Steampunk HQ

Inside Steampunk HQ - I don't really understand what's happening in here, but it was a good way to kill an hour.  The Infinity Room (pictured in the top right) was actually pretty cool, but there's no good way to describe it.

The next morning marked the beginning of a no good, very bad day. Now you may be wondering how a day that starts at a cheese factory could possibly be bad, but it was where things started to go downhill. The cheese factory's "legendary cheesecake" turned out to be lemon flavoured, which I'm allergic to and is gross.

Top row: That cheesecake is taunting you! Bottom row: The one high point in an otherwise crappy day - the tasting room at the Emerson's brewery in Dunedin.

Sighseeing in Dunedin, which is known for its Victorian architecture.

Over the next 12 hours:

• My favourite knitting needles broke after I slammed them in a door. They're super pricey, but nothing else can compare to them. None of this matters because they're not sold in New Zealand, so replacing them is probably not in the cards anytime soon.
• We had to walk nearly 2 miles to find replacement knitting needles, and they didn't have the right size.
• It started raining while we were walking back from the brewery.
• The restaurant we reserved dinner at lost our reservations and told us it would be an hour wait.
• The food at the restaurant we went to instead was inedible, and the waitress was incredibly rude.

None of this seems too terrible writing it all out, but it was made so much worse by what happened as we were leaving the cheese factory - I pulled my green sunglasses out of my purse only to find the frames had snapped!  I bought them for St. Patrick's Day 2013 for $10 at Claire's, so it was probably only a matter of time, but that didn't make it any less devastating. 

In memoriam - RIP green sunnies. You will be sorely missed.

By the time my no-good, very bad day rolled around, I was exhausted and ready to get home. As a reminder, I spent three weeks travelling back and forth from Sydney, only to arrive back in Auckland the day before we left for our Christmas Vacation trip. At this point, I'd slept in 18 different beds in just five weeks. I love travelling, and I know how lucky I am to have these problems, but I also learned what my limit is, and that's 18 beds in 5 weeks!

The next day was the last day of our trip, and we headed out to spend the day at the Otago Peninsula before catching our evening flight back to Auckland.

First up - the Royal Albatross Centre! It is not raining and I am not afraid of sun, but I am protecting myself from bird droppings - which you would do too if you'd been pooped on as many times as I have!

The Larnach Castle on Otago Peninsula - built by some crazy rich banker in the 1880s. The castle fell into disrepair and then was restored by a single family starting in the 1960s. The grounds are a great spot for a picnic.

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