A day in Dunedin cycling around the city sights, so about 12kms or 8 miles of cycling. We decided to focus on the city centre and so we had a quick look at the art gallery and the anglican cathedral, and a longer time wandering around the botanic gardens. And we also called in briefly on the Railway Station - a lovely building with some impressive tiles and stained glass (as pictured to the left). The day was sunny but very windy, after a rainy and windy night (sleep interrupted when a huge gust arrived and threatened to topple the tent) and we spent the day trying not to think of whether the tent would still be standing when we returned.Dunedin Art Gallery is small but has some wonderful paintings - a nice stormy early Turner of little boats in a bay in big waves, a Monet of ice breaking up on a winter's day on the Seine (part of a series of studies of light, ice and landscape), a lovely modern picture by some NZ artist of a very modern woman smoking (Quaint Irene from Mapp and Lucia). Guy liked a picture of the young Walter Scott meeting the older Robbie Burns in Edinburgh. Pretty interesting - I assume there was a fair amount of mutual incomprehension in this (historical) meeting. There are a few abstracts but I didn't care for or understand them. They did a fair bit of curious juxtaposition - so the painting of a CEO of some megacorp was near to a picture of a tattooed and wise looking old Maori, who wasn't far from a picture of a shaggy haired artist drinking beer in the sun outside a bar.The cathedral was a little bit more complete than the one in Nelson but once again grand designs had met financial reality with curious consequences. The nave of the church was fine and included a lovely high vault. But the crossing and the chancel were not done and much later a concrete (faced with local stone) chancel was added. The styles don't mesh particularly well I reckon. I certainly miss stained glass and an east window.We also visited a couple of secondhand bookshops and various slim volumes nearly made it into the panniers. I resisted in the end because I bought a kindle ereader precisely to hold a huge heap of ebooks so I'm not short of things to read. At the moment it is Boswell's account of Samuel Johnson's Tour of the Hebrides. Very enjoyable - Johnson is a staffordshire hero, witty and wise!
The Botanical Garden has a decent Rose Garden (and some David Austin roses - so I recognised some). It also has some wonderful old trees (and giant Redwoods), a South African garden, and lots of NZ plants. Plus some impressive herbaceous borders. The teahouse (called The Crocodile) has very good value tea in a proper tea pot with a pot of water. This is a relatively unusual level of tea understanding for NZ. We ended our botanicals with a laze around in the herb garden where drifts of french lavender surrounded plantings of hibiscus, sage, etc. The photo is of a bee visiting the lavender.Finally back, via the supermarket, to the Kiwi Camper Park. It's a bit 'police state' is our campground - surveillance cameras even in the kitchen, most facilities are locked up at 10pm (so no hot chocomilk to take back to the tent to help you fall asleep). And the 10am check out time is emphasized over heavily.The wind was calming down, and after a quick visit to the cool and exposed beach (St Kilda's) we ate (drinking Moa Brewery's Belgian Tripel - very good indeed), drank tea and fell asleep.
A day in Dunedin cycling around the city sights, so about 12kms or 8 miles of cycling. We decided to focus on the city centre and so we had a quick look at the art gallery and the anglican cathedral, and a longer time wandering around the botanic gardens. And we also called in briefly on the Railway Station - a lovely building with some impressive tiles and stained glass (as pictured to the left). The day was sunny but very windy, after a rainy and windy night (sleep interrupted when a huge gust arrived and threatened to topple the tent) and we spent the day trying not to think of whether the tent would still be standing when we returned.Dunedin Art Gallery is small but has some wonderful paintings - a nice stormy early Turner of little boats in a bay in big waves, a Monet of ice breaking up on a winter's day on the Seine (part of a series of studies of light, ice and landscape), a lovely modern picture by some NZ artist of a very modern woman smoking (Quaint Irene from Mapp and Lucia). Guy liked a picture of the young Walter Scott meeting the older Robbie Burns in Edinburgh. Pretty interesting - I assume there was a fair amount of mutual incomprehension in this (historical) meeting. There are a few abstracts but I didn't care for or understand them. They did a fair bit of curious juxtaposition - so the painting of a CEO of some megacorp was near to a picture of a tattooed and wise looking old Maori, who wasn't far from a picture of a shaggy haired artist drinking beer in the sun outside a bar.The cathedral was a little bit more complete than the one in Nelson but once again grand designs had met financial reality with curious consequences. The nave of the church was fine and included a lovely high vault. But the crossing and the chancel were not done and much later a concrete (faced with local stone) chancel was added. The styles don't mesh particularly well I reckon. I certainly miss stained glass and an east window.We also visited a couple of secondhand bookshops and various slim volumes nearly made it into the panniers. I resisted in the end because I bought a kindle ereader precisely to hold a huge heap of ebooks so I'm not short of things to read. At the moment it is Boswell's account of Samuel Johnson's Tour of the Hebrides. Very enjoyable - Johnson is a staffordshire hero, witty and wise!
The Botanical Garden has a decent Rose Garden (and some David Austin roses - so I recognised some). It also has some wonderful old trees (and giant Redwoods), a South African garden, and lots of NZ plants. Plus some impressive herbaceous borders. The teahouse (called The Crocodile) has very good value tea in a proper tea pot with a pot of water. This is a relatively unusual level of tea understanding for NZ. We ended our botanicals with a laze around in the herb garden where drifts of french lavender surrounded plantings of hibiscus, sage, etc. The photo is of a bee visiting the lavender.Finally back, via the supermarket, to the Kiwi Camper Park. It's a bit 'police state' is our campground - surveillance cameras even in the kitchen, most facilities are locked up at 10pm (so no hot chocomilk to take back to the tent to help you fall asleep). And the 10am check out time is emphasized over heavily.The wind was calming down, and after a quick visit to the cool and exposed beach (St Kilda's) we ate (drinking Moa Brewery's Belgian Tripel - very good indeed), drank tea and fell asleep.