On the way to Dunedin we had lunch at Oamaru in a lovely little park where we were menaced by a couple of ducks wanting to be fed. We didn’t give in.

This is possibly a photo of Dunedin I took from the car while we were driving. It’s not the best but it was challenging to stop. It’s a lovely town on the south east edge of the South Island as you can see from Wikipedia.

This is possibly Dunedin taken from the car.

Stopped in Dunedin at a hotel to ask if they had room, they only had one very expensive room so we left the car there and crossed the road to the Commodore Motel where we were able to book a very nice room for a reasonable price. The room had a double bed in a separate room with a single bed in the main room and they could also unlock the upstairs to create an extra bedroom to make it a family room. The kitchen was quite adequate with a microwave, kettle and toaster. They also give one hour and 100 mb free Internet which was more than enough for a Skype phone call and all our Internet stuff or it would have been had I been feeling ok and not gone to bed early.
After we’d settled in I went for a quick walk to the second hand book shop I’d seen from the first hotel. I felt as if I’d come home, it was a lovely bookshop but I had to ask about Doctor Who and Agatha Christie books as they kept them in a closed room out the back. Unfortunately, we had all the ones he had. In case you go to Dunedin it’s Galaxy Books.

We walked through the Botanic Gardens on the way to the supermarket, it was a lovely experience and we took a number of photos declining to walk over the bridge and up the hill. We saw ducks here and made our normal jokes about dinner. Saw another bookshop across from the supermarket and wandered in there, they gave me a pamphlet they’ve prepared detailing the secondhand bookshops in Otago, Fiordland and Southland. Very useful resource.

Our dinner was interrupted by some very small noises possibly coming from the plastic bag behind me. Sounding very much as if an insect was trapped there I got up to investigate. Looked inside…nothing, the noise kept going and I suddenly realized it was water dripping down from the cupboard above. Opened the cupboard and more water came out, just a trickle. The OH rang the management, I was planning on waiting until after we’d eaten. The lady came over very quickly and was suitably horrified, there was a leak in the shower upstairs, supposedly fixed. She quickly offered to move us to another room but I was exhausted and declined, she did come back with some towels and reassured us it only happened in that spot and only when the person upstairs was showering, it stopped shortly and we didn’t see it happen again.

After a modest meal we took a walk up George Street to have a go at possibly spotting the locations of the shops my ancestors used to own. As it was over 100 years ago we didn’t have very high expectations and we were right, it’s too hard to find shops in such a busy place when you have very few details.

On our return we enquired about the very old rusty and slightly odd looking bike in the garden. It was apparently made by the son of the owners. It was very clever, reminded us of the sculptures made by Bruno in Marysville. He has sculptures all over NZ and some of his work appeared in The Lord of the Rings, he was scheduled to make some things for The Hobbit as well, but died, at the too young age of 39. I didn’t take a photo of it for you and I regret that. It’s odd how we generally regret the things we didn’t do.