Dunedin, New Zealand

Breakfast was disappointing at our hotel, Fable Dunedin. I think I had booked here cause it’s a historic building, and it does have lots of character. But breakfast is not its thing.

Anyways I had planned on the itinerary to take a day trip to Port Chalmers, for boutique stores and galleries and the like, but based on our whirlwind tour of Dunedin yesterday, figured we could do the same thing here in Dunedin without the hassle of driving.

There’s lots of street art in Dunedin so sketched out a rough path. Started at the train station, which is a beautiful building and one of the most photographed buildings in NZ. Unfortunately it’s undergoing restoration right now :( instead just checked out the art galleries upstairs at the station.

It was close to lunch so walked over to Beam Me Up Bagels, based on online recommendations. I had the cold smoked salmon bagel and Heather had the hot smoked version. Both were excellent.

Then we started the street art tour in earnest. The tourism board had a booklet on a Dunedin with a page for the street art. We followed their map to see most of the art, plus a few more not noted. It’s a great way to explore a city, we walked through areas we otherwise may have overlooked. (Penang in Malaysia was one of the trendsetters for this).

It took us a while to see most of the street art; the city is compact but it’s still very car-centric, so we spent a lot of time waiting at streetlights. At least here it’s acceptable to jaywalk, unlike Hobart.

We had a double espresso at Precinct Foods, their dessert was amazing.

Went back to the hotel to rest up for a few minutes before heading back out to see Toitū Otago Settlers Museum. I think it would be better marketed as a history museum, but what do I know. It was about 3pm (the place closed at 5pm) so we figured the main rush of people would have left already.

Anyways we really enjoyed the museum. There wasn’t anything specific that stood out; it was mostly a bunch of historical stuff that explained what / why we’d been seeing in NZ. Like that Abel Tasman was a Dutch explorer (we’ve seen many things named Abel Tasman) or the history behind various cultures arriving in NZ.

The last exhibit focused on communications and technology, and had a iPad (!) as one of the museum pieces.

Got back home with just enough time to shower and head back out for dinner. Tonight we ate at Plato, a restaurant all about fresh seafood. It made a nice contrast to the trendy place yesterday. It’s right on the wharf and the seafood was excellent. We split a bunch of dishes to sample almost all the types of seafood, including oysters, ceviche (more like kokoda), clams and mussels in a white wine broth, and one of the catches of the day, coconut with blue moki.

The sun was just setting as we left, (it’s the solstice today) and the lighting on the harbour was amazing.

Took a circuitous route home. We happened to pass by the Indigo Room, a little bar near one of the street art we’d see earlier, and recommended by a passerby. So we stopped in for a drink, it was a really cool place, even though we were probably two hours early and a couple decades late.