Dunedin

By Liz

5th – 6th March (rest days)

As this was the largest city (ahhh if you could call it that) / place we had been to since Christchurch – we decided to be cultural and learn everything we could about Dunedin. We went to all of the museums Dunedin has to offer, and here are my top facts about it:

Dunedin is a Gaelic word for Edinburgh, the Scottish settled here when the gold rush hit.
There is a strong British feel from the architecture (red brick terraces, railway station, windy streets, the botanical gardens) and maintaining the heritage of the city seems very important. They have kept everything.
The city has branding in gothic lettering.
There is graffiti art hidden on buildings throughout the city
Dunedin has a permanent population of about double the size of my home town Leamington Spa. But it has the Otago University campus which encourages a lively student life.
It has a confusing bike lane system, often switching sides of the road.
It has an octagon in the centre, which is where all the bars are. And happy hours.

We treated ourselves and stayed in a hostel, Geeky Geckos. A rant about the hostel: I don’t recommend it. The people who work there are backpackers therefore they get to live there for free in exchange for 14hrs a week of cleaning/reception etc. This type of work is popular around the cities, we noticed a few in Dunedin offering this, and I didn’t really see a problem with the system til now. Unfortunately it doesn’t work. The residents treat their place of work as their home. They spend all their time there, they are loud, overtake the communal areas, and even if we had wanted to attempt to make a connection, it was hard when we were woken up at 3am by 2 of the girls we know worked there. It was deeply annoying. If we wanted to be disturbed we have a tent with no solid walls for that shit.

The bed was ok though. And that was really the only reason for staying there. It also was in prime location for walking into the centre, which we did as we sent our bikes to the shop for a chain clean, break bleed and gear index (look at me and my bike lingo ehh).

One big achievement of our stay was Andy, cycling up Baldwin Street. The steepest residential street in the world, or so it claims! Hats off to him, it looked horrendous.