SPL#2 - NZ Trip (1-11Nov 07) Day 3

DAY 3 - NOV 3, 2007

We had to wake up early to catch the Intercity coach down to Dunedin today. Nevertheless I woke up thinking that must have been the best sleep I've had in a long while, since we barely slept the night before last.

It's a 5 1/2 hour drive south to Dunedin, so there was plenty of time to catch up on some sleep. But I told my parents I'd rather stay awake to enjoy the scenery. En route to Dunedin there were several stops made, specifically Ashburton and Timaru for toilet breaks and Oamaru for lunch.

Ashburton i-SITE stop

Unfortunately, the lunch break was very brief (about 25 minutes) and by the time we purchased our food we realized we had only 15 minutes to consume all of it. As you might have already expected, we didn't manage to finish everything within 15 minutes so we had to take away the remainder.

Umm.. Tastes so good.. Umm..

Upon arrival at Dunedin, we checked in to our motel. Then we proceeded for a tour of Larnach Castle, a tour I had booked weeks ago. This is the only castle in New Zealand, or so I heard. It was a Victorian- styled castle located on top on a hill overlooking the Otago Peninsula. I must be honest... I wish I had a house like that - the views were awesome!

Paranomic view of the Otago Peninsula

Larnach Castle

The castle was huge - its extravagant design included rooms specially catered for newborns, dressing up, entertainment and so on, plus a basement to top it off. Visitors were however not allowed to take photos while in the castle's premises, and I didn't think they were about to grant us a special exception so no photos on the interior decor and all, unfortunately.

Larnach Castle gardens

Conversations with... a sheep

After spending about an hour exploring the castle grounds, we travelled back to the city to see Baldwin Street, famously known as "the world's steepest street". It was a street which looked no different from the others, just that it was VERY VERY steep. From the bottom end of the street it seemed like a 45 degree slope to the top, and looking from the top end we felt there was a good chance we would fall and hurtle down the street.

Baldwin Street - look at how steep it is!

On our way back to Cable Court motel, we simply asked the driver where the supermarket was located and to our surprise, not only did he tell us where it was, he also graciously offered to wait for us as we bought our groceries. People, this is what I'd call excellent service. But now that I'm back in our third world culture I'd better not expect too much.

Cable Court motel

After we were driven back to our motel, I took a short 1 hour nap and woke up thereafter to the aroma of fried eggs, noodles and cooked cereal - a dinner meal my Dad had whipped up. Once everybody was done with dinner we went for a stroll and bought some ice cream along the way and I totally enjoyed eating it because it wasn't melting away as it would have in hotter climates.

University of Otago

We returned to our motel at around 8pm, and to our delight there were some nice programmes on television like Amazing Race Asia 2 and Deep Blue Sea (movie), which pretty much kept us occupied for the rest of the night.