1. Me, running up my hill. Teehee! No but seriously…that really is pretty much how fast I run! ;-)
2. Some buskers Jenny and I saw in town. Upside-down in roller skates! Wow.
3. Big fat wood pigeon in the botanic gardens! It was surprisingly tame!
4. Cute little duckling, that I totally could have leaned over and picked up if I’d wanted to!
5. Super comfortable pink and grey slippers.
6. My furry little buddy who sits on my knee while I blog. :)

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The Otago Museum is in an historic building, which had been completely renovated and modernised inside. Very cool. Much nicer than the Canterbury Museum here in Christchurch, in my opinion. :)

When we arrived, there was a belly dancing display in the foyer, but a large crowd was around them so we didn’t stay and watch for very long.

Belly dancing display

The butterfly exhibit was a three storey indoor rainforest, with heaps of butterflies, insects (including huge spiders, which were, fortunately, in cages behind glass!!), fish, turtles, tiny birds and huge geckos (apparently – I looked for them but couldn’t see them) all just wandering around loose. If you stood still for long enough, butterflies would come and land on you. This happened to me a few times, but I didn’t manage to take a photo since they flew away again so quickly!

Butterflies were everywhere! There were also really beautiful bright blue ones, but I missed taking photos of them. :(

I didn’t stay in the rainforest too long, since it was VERY hot and humid and I started to feel a bit dizzy, so mum and I went and looked at some of the rest of the museum.

Loved these two huge murals either side of the People of the World exhibit.

Really pretty 1920s wedding dress and bolero! I would actually totally wear this if I were tiny!

 
Two Japanese kimonos and a Samurai outfit. Loved the red one!

We also saw what I am convinced is the biggest vase (pot?) in the entire world! I couldn’t believe how massive it was, so I made mum take a photo of me next to it. I could have fitted inside if I’d wanted to!

EPIC vase. is EPIC.

And so concludes our Sunday afternoon. We also did a bit of personal, family related sightseeing and visiting, but those photos probably aren’t particularly interesting!

Photos of flowers in the gardens, and I had to take a photo sitting on that bench because I remember sitting there as a child!

This cockatoo was named Sid, and, according to the signboard outside his cage, he was born in December 1987! That makes him only three months younger than I am!

I loved these macaws! Especially the one dangling by one claw!

I can definitely see why these types of birds appeal to people as pets! But they were absolutely enormous, and the sign outside their cages said that they are extremely intelligent and comparable to a two year old child! In other words, they’re capable of demolishing your house if left unsupervised! Yikes!

Wow! This was a surprisingly short post for me! Tomorrow you might actually get to hear about Sunday! LOL!

These two bronze statues, representing the men and women who were the first early settlers of Otago (the region where Dunedin is) are on either side of the huge monument.

 
The plaque on the monument.

The text in the photo above reads…

At the beginning of the Dominion’s second century this monument is dedicated to the memory of the pioneers who braved the first.

Foundation stone laid by His Worship the Mayor of Dunedin A.H. Allen ESO, 21st February 1940.

Yes. For those of you who are observant. New Zealand is an extremely "young" country. "Historical" for us is anything prior to 1900!

This stone, hewn from the rock on which Edinburgh Castle stands, was given as a centennial memorial token by the people of Edinburgh to signify the bond which forever binds the cities of Edinburgh and Dunedin.
Auld Lang Syne.
3 April 1941

Dunedin’s "sister city" is Edinburgh, Scotland, and lots of aspects of Dunedin (culture, street names etc) are extremely Scottish. For those who don’t already know, "Auld Lang Syne" is Gaelic (I think?) and translates to something along the lines of "Long, long ago".

Laura Anne, who lives in Scotland, tells me that actually…

‘Auld Lang Syne’ is ‘Scots’ dialect of English, not Gaidhlig (Scots Gaelic). ‘Auld’ means old, ‘Lang’ means ‘long’ and I’m not sure the exact meaning of ‘syne’. ‘Auld Lang Syne’ is a poem by Robert Burns turned into a song commonly sung at the end of celebrations (like weddings and New Year’s Eve). It’s really a song about friendship.

View from the top of Signal Hill looking out over most of Dunedin.

These two symbols were on the back of the monument and represent New Zealand (fern and koru, left) and Scotland (thistle, right)

Somebody’s cute little barn I saw on the way back down the hill.

Stopping here again today, since I have (AGAIN!!!!) gone overboard with photos! You’ll have to wait until tomorrow to see what else we did. :P

1. The roadworks going on near to where I usually walk. Road was closed.
2. How I felt about aforementioned closed road. :( #sadpoutyface.
3. Maori cultural performance as part of the Buskers Festival.
4. Some VERY brightly coloured clothes I saw at Farmers.
5. The dress I decided on for a friend’s wedding.
6. "Rocky park only". Goodness knows who Rocky is, but apparently he’s allowed to park there!

Size wise, I am a 12 – 14, which is not slim, but not plus sized either. I am 5"5′ tall and haven’t decided whether I will wear heels or not yet.

These are the four I am considering. If I decided on the first one, it would be in a dark grey/blue colour rather than red.

To be honest, I am leaning quite heavily towards one, but figured I would ask for some more opinions just to see whether I’m crazy or not.

So, what say you, stylish and fashionable readers….?!

SOMETIMES I think I should put more effort into Photoshopping pictures of myself for this blog, to make myself ridiculously pretty and flawless, but I ALWAYS realise that people who actually know me read this, and they’d be like "Who the heck is that!?"

SOMETIMES I see awesome heels on other blogs and think "I want them!!", but I would ALWAYS end up faceplanting in about 3 seconds if I tried to walk!

SOMETIMES my wisdom teeth annoy me a bit and I wonder whether I should get them out, but I go to the dentist and am ALWAYS told they don’t need to be removed…so I think I will save myself the pain and misery, since I’m apparently one of the lucky ones whose teeth are normal!

I SOMETIMES feels this real drive to "make the most out of" having this Mysterious Kidney Disease, because I want to gain something from this experience, but then I really ALWAYS end up wishing I didn’t have it in the first place! Swings and roundabouts, I suppose.

 
This plaque and the awesome archway were outside the entrance to the garden. I loved the colours of the archway.

  
Huge mountain made out of rock imported from Lake Taihu in China, and me, standing next to a cute little bridge. The church spire in the distance behind me is First Church, which will make an appearance in a later post. :)

 
The view from the top of the rock mountain. I did fix my hair before I left the hotel that morning, but it was so windy that I may as well not have bothered!

  
More miscellaneous photos of the garden. Huge goldfish lived in the pond, which wasn’t actually as murky and green as it looks!

It was strange how quiet and peaceful the garden was, since it was in the middle of the city and also right next to a railway! A few other people were there at the same time, but for the most part, I think I avoided having them in my photos.

The awesome courtyard at one side of the garden. The big building in the bottom photo was used as a function room for hire.

Upstairs in the function room, there were traditional Chinese wooden puzzles, and costumes to try on. Obviously they were designed for women somewhat smaller than I am, but they still fitted, so obviously I dressed up. Couldn’t convince mum to put one on, though. :P

I really liked the one I tried on because it had pink and teal on it. Two out of three favourite colours wasn’t bad. ;) The jeans underneath spoiled the effect a bit, though. :P

I was planning to write about where we went on Saturday afternoon in this post as well, but this has already become INSANELY long and picture-filled, so I’ll do a separate post about that tomorrow. :)

I hope my international readers are enjoying seeing a little bit about New Zealand…and maybe catching a travel bug or two!? ;)

1. A giant salmon. Look at its expression – it doesn’t look too pleased to be stuck on a pole. :(
2. Part of an awesome Chinese archway.
3. Latticework in a Chinese garden we visited last week.
4. A painted vase at the Chinese garden.
5. Awesome parrots. I think this might be one of my favourite Instagram photos in awhile!
6. A butterfly in the Otago Museum.
7. An amusing (and mouldy!?) sign I saw. I mostly took this to post on FB to amuse my TColl friends. ;)
8. Me, matching a 1930s Cadbury chocolate deliver truck.
9. Olveston, an historic house in Dunedin.
10. A church which was too big to get far enough away from to photograph!
11. The beach at Moeraki. I’m not going to say where, as it would give away my quiz below. ;)
12. Cute little red bridge at the Oamaru Botanic Garden.

Also, one other photo to share…

Is anyone REALLY super clever and able to tell me which Mystery Location I am at, and what I am sitting on? ;-) 

EDIT: Rachel was correct! I was at Moeraki sitting on a boulder. :)

I did, however, take a lot of photos. 494 photos in 5 days, to be exact. To some people that might sound like a lot, but for me, it really isn’t. Unlike some other bloggers, I am not a super-awesome-professional-quality photographer. I tend to end up with huge numbers of duds (blurry, too much glare, random people photobombing etc), so taking hundreds of them means I end up with at least a few which are good! I know. Thank goodness I don’t use a film camera, right!?

Aaaanyway! While we were in Dunedin, we went and did quite a few cool little things I thought I would share, since people always seem to like reading about my teeny little island in the middle of nowhere! :)

On our drive from Christchurch to Dunedin on Friday morning, we stopped in a VERY small town (just over 1000 people) named Rakaia. The most exciting thing in Rakaia is the giant salmon.

For years and years and years I had actually assumed that this was a trout, but considering that across the driveway from this large fish was a visitors centre and restaurant aptly named "Salmon World", I think it’s safe to assume that an enormous trout would have been a little odd.

We stopped for lunch in Timaru. It was wet and gross, as can be seen below. :/ It’s ok on a fine day though, it has nice Botanical Gardens.

PS: For anybody thinking that I was driving and taking photographs at the same time, remember that in NZ, the driver sits on the right-hand side of the car and we drive on the left-hand side of the road. Mum was driving. :)

Our next stop was Waimate, yet another teeny little town. The most exciting thing I spotted there was a very cute little shop named Vintage Chic. Christchurch doesn’t have many of these shops anymore (thanks, earthquake) so I spent a bit of time wandering around in it and contemplating pretty dresses and floral teacups. Sadly, we had to keep on driving to get to Dunedin at a reasonable hour, so no exciting purchases were made. :( I did take a photo of their shop window, though, and left wishing I lived closer to it. :)

After stopping off in Oamaru for another break (which, oddly, I didn’t take photos of!?), we arrived at our hotel. After we checked in, we discovered the following sign in our room (apologies for blurriness)…

I don’t know whether it was down to the fact we’d been in the car all day with not much fresh air or exercise, but mum and I both found the description of the "nearest exit" rather humourous. "By going out the door of this room." How…novel. o.O

We got Subway for dinner and spent the rest of the evening driving around Dunedin doing a bit of personal, family-related sightseeing. I hadn’t been to Dunedin since 2004, and am convinced it was larger (and more hilly!!) than I remembered.

Speaking of hills, Dunedin is home to Baldwin Street, which is, apparently, the steepest street in the world. We did not drive up it, and after having been in the hospital three days earlier, I was advised against "strenuous exercise", so we didn’t walk either, sadly. We did, however, park next to it so I could take some photos.

Yes, the pictures are real, no, it’s not a set from Inception, and the only editing I have done to them is a bit of cropped and brightening. It really is that steep!

Could you imagine living on this street, or walking your dog up and down it every day!? Maybe once, just so I could say I’d done it, but I surely wouldn’t want to do it every day!

As for why it’s so ridiculously steep, Wikipedia informs me that…

The street’s steepness was unintentional. As with many other parts of Dunedin, and indeed New Zealand, streets were laid out in a grid pattern with no consideration for the terrain, usually by planners in London.

So basically, ye olden day towne planners decided it was going to be a residential street, but had not ever actually visited NZ, so didn’t realise this area was in fact probably not very suitable. FAIL…and yet…EPIC WIN!

Another EPIC WIN for Baldwin Street….Jaffa racing. Combine Jaffas, which are small, round, chocolates with a hard, red shell with a ridiculously steep street, and this happens…

Photo taken from the top of the street looking down to the finish point at the bottom. It’s a charity fundraiser and people pay to sponsor the Jaffas. Crazy, right?

That’s about all we did on our first day in Dunedin, but I did also see this awesome rainbow bus shelter, which I really liked.

Day II post is scheduled and will be up tomorrow! :)