Dunedin was originally going to be called Edinburgh by the Scottish folks that arrived many years ago and so they used the Gaellic name instead and many of the streets are called the same as in Edinburgh. Anyway Dunedin and its surrounds make for a very pleasant place to live. There are over 30,000 students from NZ and around the world studying here with many from Asia.
An Albatross in flight
When you walk down the main street all you can see is Japanese, Thai and Chinese restaurants apart from the odd American, great restaurants such as McDonalds, Burger King and Starbucks.
There are some very nice buildings in this town and as mentioned yesterday it was raining so hard we did not take any photos, that was left for today only we got diverted.
We left the Motel and headed off down the Peninsula to visit the Alabatross Sanctuary, it took about an hour to get there and driving very close to the water at times it was a very nice journey indeed. We arrived at the Sanctuary only to find that they only had organised tours which meant that if we joined it would mess up our plans for a train trip on the Tairi Gorge Railway, more of this later.
So we tried to see an albatross but no luck so Noel took photos of the Sanctuary photos which he will show and hope that nobody notices. However we did spot a seal but could not get close enough without undressing and swimming out to sea. We left there and headed back to Dunedin and there are some great views of the City and some very nice and expensive houses en-route.
We then went to Larnach Castle which is on the top of the Pensinsular with Magnificent views from each direction. This is the only Castle in New Zealand. It was nice but not a patch on Windsor Castle or the Castle Pub in Richmond.
Following an exciting lunch in Burger King (well you have to sometimes and besides we could watch on the TV the English thrashing the Canadians at the 7's) we arrived at the station to join the train. It was quite full with tourists from around the world but unfortunately they seem to gather the people from the same country in the same carriage and so we were surrounded by 'Brits', not what we expected.
The Train offers a four hour tour up and through The Taierei Gorge , during this time the weather went from bright sun, to very cloudy and then back to sun. The journey was quite interesting and enabled both of us to enjoy the journey without one of us driving and the other navigating.
After two hours of uphill and round corners and over metal bridges built in the 19th century we arrived at Pukerangi where you can leave the train and catch a bus to Queenstown. We didn't do this but got back on the train and ended back in Dunedin some two hours later where we headed back to the Motel to catch up with Blogging and uploading photos etc. Tomorrow we may try,if the weather is kind and before we leave, to take a few more photos of this lovely town. We think it's nicer than Christchurch but Auckland and its Harbour are still beatifull.
