Dunedin, Thursday

 Later start this morning, leaving the hotel at 8.30. Travelled through the countryside which as more rolling hills than mountains. Very pretty. Lots of deer, sheep and cattle, plus tree forests. 

Morning tea stop at Gore and then onto the east coast at Dunedin. It is known as the Edinburgh of the South supposedly due to the influx of miners during the gold rush, but apart from a statue of Robbie Burns and the architecture of some old churches I fail to see the Scottish connection.

 Had lunch at a little restaurant called Vault 21 and had perogi. They were delicious. We had hoped to go on a tour of Speights brewery which is the local beer, but unfortunately our tour guide Di let us down and missed us about with explanations of why she hadn’t been able to book it, even though Travelmarvel offer it and we confirmed with her the morning after the tour started that we wanted to do that optional tour. Anyway I tried to book-in for dinner there but they were booked out. Said to try the bar area as a walk in off the street and we might be lucky to get a table!

As we now had a free afternoon, I wandered up the Main Street, Princes Street for some retail therapy but was very disappointed. Bought absolutely nothing. Most of the stores were the same or very similar to home so no point buying anything here just to cart home.

Walked the short distance around the corner to Speights. Pat, who I’ve been sitting next to on the coach since South Island when the newbies joined us and filled the coach, came to dinner with us. We were fortunate enough to get a table upstairs. Had a really nice main meal, I had the rump steak (first red meat in a fortnight so not doing too good at keeping up my necessary iron intake) and a drink and then waddled back to our hotel to retire to our rooms at a reasonable hour.

Not that impressed with Dunedin so won’t need to rush back here, but it was nice having a few free hours to do my own thing. Last full day of our tour tomorrow so as they say in the classics, “All good things must come to an end”. As a repeat Travelmarvel traveller, the organisation of this tour has not been up to par. Di is clearly new at being a tour director and has lots of room for improvement. Tui is a satisfactory driver but waffles way too much on the microphone whilst driving. He and Di are not working as a team and as such our enjoyment of the tour has been affected due to the misinformation and lack of clarity for each day’s itinerary. We waited 4 years for this tour and it certainly has been good, but past experience shows that it should have been better. And on that note, I will have my nightcap and lights out.