A very gloomy Dunedin

With the weather deciding to still be rubbish we decided it was a good reason for today to become a museum visit day. Everything is harder in the rain especially when you don't really have a good way to dry anything. We were trying to look on the bright side and drove the misty short journey from our beachside camp spot into Dunedin, a city first settled by the Scots. It's a much harder city to navigate with lots of one way roads and after we found out that the museum doesn't have a carpark we then faced the battle of city parking in what feels like a massive van to us. It isn't that big at all really but definitely feels it when trying to park. After a couple of laps we found a parking spot at the end of a row so I could drive in and with Nick's guidance we parked up well. It is also Sunday so the parking was free which was a bonus. On the way to the museum we discovered our first piece of Dunedin street art, a huge piece with many fairytale characters and scenes shown. I do find these street artworks definitely add character to a city and if the weather clears up we plan to explore more of what the area offers. We didn't hang around long to appreciate it because of the rain and eventually we entered a warm and welcoming museum with many other people who had the same idea for today's activity. While I sat and waited for Nick to go to the toilet I noticed a little girl, about 2, going up the stairs but continuously looking back and no one seemed to be with her. A minute or so later a very distressed dad carrying a baby was spinning around the lobby calling a girl's name . I ran over and asked if he was looking for a blonde girl and he said yes so I pointed up to the balcony where she was and the look of relief as he ran up the stairs was very heart warming. It was always my biggest fear when working as nanny, especially because the child isn't yours. The museum itself was huge and very extensive in it's collection of artefacts. It does get quite overwhelming after a while with the level of information there is to read. We decided to go to a planetarium show on dark matter which was incredibly heavy and quite intense. It was interesting but because dark matter is a theory we didn't really learn anything because no one knows what it is. The museum also had an amateur photography competition exhibited. The most moving and shocking photo was for the "human impact" category. The winning photo shows two Kea parrots, a native bird to NZ, fighting over eating a cigarette. It was this amazing photo to look at and then you read what is happening and it really hits you what a powerful message it shows. After feeling like we'd packed as much information into our brains as we could for one day we faced the rain once more and drove to our freedom camping spot for the night, a pub carpark by a green. Some of the freedom spots are in such random areas but when they're free you don't really mind! We settled down for a rainy night and made homemade pizzas for tea. Hopefully the weather gets better tomorrow. Going outside to turn the gas on and off in the rain isn't much fun! Czytaj więcej