Day 79: Dunedin Rest Day 2

Time: Slow
Distance: Not Far
Avg Speed: Walking
Terrain: Flat and wet

We woke up to the sounds of rain on the fly this morning so we snuggled back into our sleeping bags and decided to have a leisurely breakfast. We had planned on heading into the city today by bike, but with the weather we opted for the drier option. We have gotten better at the public buses while traveling. One of our first forays was in Quito, Ecuador where we didn’t really know where the bus was going, we just knew it cost a quarter and was heading back to our hotel. It was that first experience that taught us to move with a purpose and watch what the locals are doing. One time in London Leslie didn’t watch the locals to see where they were recovering their subway passes on the other side of the style. It was no big deal, but right then we were labeled as tourists and not as some other Londoner heading home for the day. Fast forward to this trip. We find out the bus schedule, figure out the times and always let someone else go first if we can. The bus drivers are always nice and point to the dish where we are supposed to drop our money in and tell us to grab our ticket out of the machine. Earlier in this leg of the trip some passengers in Wellington even figured out that we were about to miss our stop and signaled the driver for us. I guess three people and a 6’8” guy looking clueless always tips people off to the tourist thing.
Dunedin is very interesting city. We killed time by going to a very cool used bookstore and finding a couple of gems to send home. We were laughing because two used books were the first things we had bought for ourselves to send home on this trip. We then headed over to the Otago Settlers Museum to check it out. It helped that it was free. We ended up spending quite a bit of time there checking out the bicycle and motorcycle collection and display. They even had a penny-farthing bicycle set up for people to sit on and check out. A penny-farthing is actually a brand name of the bicycles that had a big wheel up front and a little wheel in back. I think that those would have been difficult contraptions to master, let alone ride. Leslie looked quite at home on it though.
We ended up our trip downtown with a visit to the Monteith Craft Brewery restaurant where we devoured two dishes of appetizers and a couple of yummy beers. The rain really never ceased to fall all day so we caught the bus back and have spent the rest of the day hanging out in the kitchen. We did manage to catch the news where a male news caster sat in front of a blown of photo of David Beckham wearing nothing but his tighty whities. The news caster never cracked a smile as he reported the world’s buzz about what exactly was in those shorts and that some felt that David looked like a page three tart. Leslie and I were on the floor laughing since: A) this made the news, B) the newsman never cracked a smile, and C) that David looked like a page three tart. You just can’t make this stuff up.
See you
CK