Thursday 12 December 2013

Day 35 The Taieri Gorge Railway


After being woken up at 5, by the weird man that moved into our room last night, we set off down to the Saturday Market that showcases locals crafts in the heart of Dunedin. It was tiny, but cute, and after browsing for a while we started exploring the Octagon itself.
So weird seeing christmas trees when it's over 30 degrees!
A statue of Robert Burns (with a bird on his head)
St Paul's Cathedral 
First up was St Paul’s Church, in case you haven’t noticed I love looking at the architecture of different churches! I loved how the higher your eye rose the more impressive, bright and airy the architecture became to the point that when you looked up it was truly stunning, more so for it’s lack of intricate decoration and color, allowing the actual structure to speak for itself.

 The beautiful arches 

Next up was the Dunedin Art Gallery which is just next-door and had free entry. I’d forgotten how much I love art galleries. I spent hours wandering around admiring and contemplating the various exhibitions and just enjoying the pieces. It was also relatively interactive in sections with a yellow blowup ‘forest’ you have to push yourself through as well as giant rocking toys you need to try and make ring. It was nice to have the classic works, such as the painting the ‘ebbing tide’ that I loved, new modern pieces as well as the kind of alternative interactive pieces. Me and Axel then decided to go to the adjoining cafĂ©, of course. And after a coffee we decided we might as well have lunch there. But that turned out to not be the wisest decision as we the salad took longer than expected meaning we had to have a mad rush to catch our train!
 Setting off!



 We saw some gorgeous views as we followed the river



(I'm assuming they have a stall here occasionally and they're not actually conning poor tourists into buying rocks...)
We’d booked, this morning, the Taieri Gorge Railway which takes you from the beautiful Dunedin Railway Station to Pukerangi along some of the most inaccessible but stunning country. It was in the guidebook as one of the 29 things you absolutely had to do in NZ so we decided to give it a go, and it was beautiful.
I love walking around and seeing old buildings - it's definitely one of the things I've missed while being in New Zealand 
The First Church
The trip took at total of four hours which was the perfect amount of time as it gave us chance to see everything and yet didn’t feel too long. Today was really fun and we’ve finally agreed on what to do tomorrow so I can’t wait to set off. From here onward we’re all doing different things so all four of us won’t really we travelling together too much as we all have different dates me need to be back in the North Island.

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