Dunedin

July 24, 2009

Ah, lovely Dunedin. We got up, got ready and went out to pick up A and her boyfriend Nick. We went to a cafe in the Octagon (town center) called Nova and sat and chatted for quite a while. A and I got to watch Raven grill Nick, which was pretty entertaining. We dropped Nick off and went onto campus to see the museum.

Dunedin is definitely a college town. Its big school is Otago University and it really has the feel of a college town. The museum has a bunch of local art and a kids area complete with a butterfly exhibit. We of course had to go see the butterflies. We walked through the displays talking about butterflies and then walked in, armed with our cameras. It was so hot and humid in there that my camera lens immediately fogged over. I had to keep wiping the lens in order for my pictures to show up. As with most butterfly exhibits, there were butterflies flying everywhere. Raven was hoping that a butterfly might fly into my hair or A’s so that she could get a picture. No such luck as each time a butterfly flew at my hair, I kind of panicked (it’s that moth thing). I thought one was on my jeans and jumped into the air. It turns out it was my belt sticking out. A thought my reaction was very funny. We walked along the different levels of the butterfly house and when we got to the bottom we saw a cage with an incredibly fat, 7 headed bird. WTF? It turns out it was a finch that was carrying all of its babies around on in its feathers. It was so strange. A few minutes later, it must have tired of piggy back rides because they were hoping around near her.

We looked around for a while and then A and Raven left to take A to a lecture somewhere on campus. I had an hour or so to kill so I wandered the butterfly exhibit some more. I had planned on checking out the rest of the museum but I was restless so I went to the gift shop and then the coffee shop instead and people watched. I then walked over to the bookstore and browsed, happy to explore. I waited there until A was done with her lecture and we got back into the car and headed out for lunch. I’ve been so bad on this trip foodwise. I’m afraid to step back on the scale when I get back. Oops. Anyway, we went out for Thai food. A and Raven love Phad Si Yew (spelling, sorry) and haven’t been able to find a good one in NZ. It’s funny the things one takes for granted at home that are so impossible to find elsewhere.

I imagine that this part of my entry will be quite boring. Maybe I’ll spare everyone the details and say that we ran some errands, we dropped A off at work and I shopped on my own until 5:30 or so when I met up with A and Raven again. OK, I should mention where A works. She has an atypical retail job. She works at a place called Coco Bella, which I saw while we drove down the street and thought it was an Italian restaurant. Um, I was a bit off. It’s actually an upscale sex toy shop, selling a variety of dildos and lingerie. It was quite entertaining and educational getting A’s tour of the shop.

We went back to Nova, the cafe we’d gone to for breakfast and almost didn’t get in because we didn’t have a reservation. While wandering on my own I’d seen that the Dunedin Film Festival was starting that evening so we perused the pamphlet and found a movie we thought might be worth seeing. It was called “An Education” and it was a good movie. Basically it’s about a 16 year old girl in England in the 1960’s who gets involved with a 40 year old man. It was well done and we thought we’d made a good choice.