Dunedin, NZ Today’s adventure was really amazing. It’s probably our favorite thing we’ve done so far in New Zealand. We booked a 6 hour tour with Elm Wildlife Tours. A tour van picked us up in the city center of Dunedin and we took a beautiful 45 minute drive out to the Otago Peninsula. We [...]
Continue reading about Penguins, Sea Lions, and Fur Seals Oh My!
Dunedin, NZ Today we splurged a bit and purchased tickets for the Taieri Gorge railway. Construction of this railway was begun in 1879, but because of the tough terrain and the economic depression during those years in New Zealand, it took 10 years to open the first section. It wasn’t officially completed until 1921. In [...]
Dunedin, NZ It was raining again today. You may be wondering the same thing we were — does it always rain in New Zealand? We’ve asked several people, and the answer is always the same: we’ve had unusual amounts of rain the past week (lucky us). However, we decided to make the most of it [...]
Dunedin, NZ We left Auckland and the north island today in order to head to the south island. We decided it might be best to visit the south island early on in our trip since New Zealand is heading into winter (it’s the opposite of the US – it’s colder in the south and warmer [...]
Auckland, NZ Today we made a second attempt to visit the Auckland Museum. (You may remember that the last time we tried to go they had a power outage due to weather and were closed.) When we arrived at the museum today we were thankful to find out that they were indeed open to the [...]
Auckland, NZ Today we ventured into the Auckland suburb of Mt. Albert. First we attended church services at Mt. Albert Baptist Church. The church service was remarkably similar to our church services in the U.S. We even sang a lot of the same songs — except maybe with a New Zealand accent! Service at Mt. [...]
Auckland, NZ After one night of “roughing it” at a local hostel, we decided that the extra few dollars were definitely worth the amenities of a “serviced apartment.” So today we moved to a very nice (but still very affordable) serviced apartment called the Waldorf. (Apparently no relation to the American ultra-expensive Waldorf chain.) The [...]
Continue reading about Farmer’s Market and a New Side of Town
Auckland, NZ Sometimes the world is just not spinning your way and today was definitely one of those days for us. Everything started off just fine. We checked out of the hotel where we stayed the last 2 nights and headed to the hostel in Ponsonby where we had made reservations the night before. Ponsonby [...]
Continue reading about It’s a Hard Knock Life, but . . . The Sun Will Come Out Tomorrow
Auckland, NZ Since they still speak English in New Zealand we haven’t had too much of a culture shock, but there have been some slight differences we’ve noticed. For instance, rugby is seen all over – on several tv stations, on ads around the city, even inside Sky City. Dan even decided to get in [...]
It rained on and off today, but we were able to make the most of it. We found it interesting that very few people use umbrellas here. Maybe it’s because it’s a city, maybe it’s because there are a lot of overhangs, or maybe it’s because it was just raining on and off. We’re not [...]