Akaroa was quaint. Quaint, quaint, quaint. I heard enough of all these people saying it was their favorite place. It would rain less in my favorite place.

Back to driving, and we were headed south to Dunedin, a Scottish flavor town (By the way, they say doo-need-in – I would have gone with dune-a-dinn). I heard that not many people that do tours make it to this city, so I wasn’t sure what to expect. Man are they dumb. It was incredible. We didn’t get enough information on the history of the city, but it is part of the Otago region and has (I think) the oldest NZ college. The drive was one I stayed awake for of the best yet and the city, well, it was beautiful. Their downtown is shaped like two octagons around each other, full of shops and inns and bars. Everyone seemed so happy. We got in and wandered around a bit to take some pictures. It was late so most everything was shut up for the day already, but it was absolutely beautiful and we had a big day coming up again, so we were happy to relax at the hotel.

Which, was about 30 times bigger than the B&B, and which also only had one ice machine and no tubs for ice, which resulted in me running through three stories. Twice. In my pjs. Carrying ice in a ziploc. Twice. The things I go through so the hubby and I can drink a little wine.

Speaking of which, I bet it sounds to you like we had wine every night. Well, we did. But we had very little, so there is something to be said for that. Tolerance is a good thing. The issue was, what with moving around so much, we were lugging the stuff we had bought around. We had intended to bring it back to the States, until we realized how complicated (read: expensive and time consuming) this was. Plus, there is a website,

winedeli.com

that you can just order stuff from that you can’t get here. When we found that out, well, we had some drinking to do.

If you and I have anything in common, you might agree with me that when it rains, you’d rather call it a day and read a book and have some wine, at the very least stay indoors. If you’re not like me, then it’s perfectly fine to go on a boat cruise of the Akaroa Harbour in the fog and the rain.

I did get to venture out momentarily to see some Hector’s dolphins, apparently one of the smallest types, and a calf and everything. It was as nice as it could be considering, but I was glad when it was over.

Of course, it cleared up after we were done and we were able to spend some time looking in the little art galleries and shops and have a pretty great lunch at a local restaurant that actually served pasta – I think that was a first for me – and headed back to our B&B. They did their Happy Hour again and we talked with all the visitors, who besides us, were all from the UK. It was very interesting to hear about how they were unhappy with things there and wanting to find a new place to live. One coupled had actually just moved to another part of NZ permanently and were telling us about what that was like. You know, in case we were considering it…

As you may have noticed, every other day was the driving day, for the most part, so that’s where we were today, in the car. I might have dozed off a little on the way, but MK woke me up to (dork) show me where the Lord of the Rings ring was made…where some big waves were, and (finally, worth waking up) some fur seals. Fur seals are tiny and are different than other seals because of their little external ears (so cute!) There were a good amount on the rocks on the side of the road. MK climbed down and got right close to one.

We stopped for lunch (yes, probably McDonalds…) at a cute town and got a calling card to call the Mom and Dads. There were some giant vineyards on the way to Christchurch, some great views of the land. We stopped to stretch our legs, and I was blown away. Christchurch is a beautiful city. I wanted to spend more time but we had to get back on the road. MK and I argued for about the rest of the hour ride why he thought the city sucked and I liked it after being there for 10 minutes.

We drove all the way up and back down a mountain into the bay of Akaroa. Akaroa was settled as a French town way back whenever. It was quaint, and the weather was miserable. To our surprise, having only been in hotels, we were set up to stay in a Bed and Breakfast. Different…but includes some free wine so fine by me. They all went out for fancy dinners and we retired to our room for the night.