Lots of news today. Lots of exciting things happened, plus I am going to come clean about a dirty little secret, and there will be a quiz …
Today was very exciting because not only did we see land, we got to walk on it! Dunedin was our port destination for today.
And not only did we get to walk on solid ground, but we were able to get internet access!
We started the day in the usual way – wake, perform all of the usual administrative tasks, go for breakfast. Rather than going up to Horizon Court today, we went down to the International Cafe and just had coffee and some fruit and yoghurt.
We activated our NZ SIM card on the 2 degrees network, and we were once again complete. (You obviously know this fact already, because you received three days of blog updates all come in at once!)
We had already docked at Port Chalmers (like the Port of Brisbane, but they make it hard by not calling it the Port of Dunedin).
Some of the ports where we will be stopping have a free shuttle bus to town due (I believe) to ongoing earthquake damage, meaning that they do not want people walking around at the port. Other ports are so close to the town centre that you can easily walk there.
The only option that we had here to get from Port Chalmers to downtown Dunedin was to take the shuttle bus for the very reasonable* cost of $35 each return.
(*sarcasm)
We were determined not to spend that much, even if it meant splitting a cab with people that we didn’t know.
We got off the ship, went through immigration/customs and got ourselves into the port terminal. We found a lady and enquired about how to get to town, and we were advised that there is a regular bus service that runs every hour for the grand sum of … wait for it … $1.50/person each way.
If you do the math, that’s $6.00 return for the two of us. If you do more math, that is $64 less that Princess offer a shuttle bus.
We had a bit of a wander around Port Chalmers, saw the bus coming, and queued up behind (maybe) 30-40 other people – tourists like us – and waited to get on the bus.
By the time about 35 of the people before us had got on the bus, the lady driver said she could not take any more passengers (even though the bus was only half full) because “locals come first”.
Welcome to Dunedin!
Fortunately another “Out of Service” bus pulled in right behind her, and he was more than willing to fill his bus to the gills and take the rest of us into the city.
Still traumatised by the “where did we park our car” experience in Melbourne, we make absolutely sure that we got a place mark in Google Maps for where we caught the bus back home, and went off exploring … for coffee 🙂
My mobile phone has a feature set called “WiFi Calling” which means that you are making calls using the internet (or more specifically the data on your phone). When you have this feature set and you are connected to WiFi, I found that my phone works as though it is in Australia – I can dial an Australian number and it sees the call as coming from my Australian mobile number.
“So what?” you ask? So you don’t need international roaming on your phone. You just need to connect to WiFi and you can make and receive calls normally.
Who would’ve thunk?
One of the most photographed buildings in NZ is the railway station building. Now that we were again caffeinated, we went off in search of this national treasure …
… and we found it, all wrapped up because it was getting work done on it.
Bugger. But we took photos anyway.
We had been to the local tourist information centre and been given some things to see in Dunedin, and the next place on the list was the Settlers Museum – a museum of all things historically Dunedin.
From there it was just a wander around town. There was nothing of particular interest that we wanted to see in Dunedin – just walk around a get a feel for the place.
We found the Octagon – which is the main hub of the CBD – and got our bearings from there.
Down the Main Street/mall and we found a Farmers (like a Myer), and this is where the dirty little secret comes out. I went looking for a new pair of chinos, because the ones that I brought with me on the cruise seem to have shrunk 🙁 I needed something that was a better, more comfortable fit.
We found a bakery and bought a light lunch and sat in the sunshine enjoying it.
The forecast for Dunedin today was a top of around 13-15 degrees, so we wisely wore layers. We both wore a long-sleeved tee-shirt with another shirt/hoodie over the top and our puffer jackets for when it got really cold.
They lied. It may have only been 15 degrees, but walking around town in the sunshine, we carried our jackets and other outer clothes for most of the day.
With limited ability to get around and with the looming threat of the Grand Princess sailing without us if we were late back, we decided to head back to the Octagon to catch the #14 bus back to Port Chalmers.
Now, here is the quiz. When is a Woolies not a Woolies? When it is …
… a Countdown.
We found the bus stop and there were already maybe 40-50 people queued up to catch it, so we had a realistic expectation that we would be waiting another hour for the next one … but when the driver arrived he happily took our $3.00, we all crammed in, and he even picked up more passengers on the way.
Back at Port Chalmers by about 3.00pm for coffee and a bite of (late) lunch and we headed back to our cabin to take advantage of the internet access while we were still docked and caught up on emails and news.
We pulled out from Port Chalmers around 5.15pm, sailed back out into the open sea and turned left (north) towards our next stop tomorrow of Littletown/Christchurch.
MBW read her book for a while while I had my customary afternoon nap, and we got dressed for dinner in Botticelli restaurant again.
We had dinner at a shared table tonight, with Mary and David, and Carmella and Joe – all Melbournites.
Nathan Foley was the show in the Princess Theatre again tonight, and while he is not bad – a bit like John Farnham – it feels like he is trying too hard. Apparently he got his name in Hi5, the kids music group. He certainly got the crowd going, and once again sang all of the hits from the ‘50s through to the ‘80s.
Well, maybe not all of the them, but 45 minutes worth 🙂
The captain came over the PA system this afternoon telling us that a blood moon was occurring between 10.00pm and 11.15pm tonight and the weather forecast was favourable for viewing it.
A blood moon is when there is a total eclipse of the moon, with the Earth directly in line between the Sun and the Moon.
We were blessed with a spectacular sunset tonight after dinner, with the sky changing from purple to pink to orange, so we stood out on the back deck of Level 7 until it all got a bit too cold.
After dinner and coffee we tracked down a trivia night that was just our speed and speciality: Billy Joel and Elton John trivia where you get a bit of a song and you needed to identify it. If MBW and I have a speciality, this has to be it!
15 out of 20 was not too shabby and made us feel like winners, even if we didn’t (win).
Christchurch tomorrow. Another opportunity to disembark and walk around the city and see the sights. It should be another nice day!
TTFN
#G&KDoNZ2022