Began the day at Capers. Unlike its name would suggest, it’s not a Mediterranean restaurant. According to our research (and observation), it’s the best place to eat pancakes in Dunedin. The food was excellent, and we probably had the best pancakes outside of the USA and, as kiwi love their coffee, better coffee than we could get inside the USA.
We had two goals today: visit the Otago Museum and retrieve our tickets for the scenic train ride we’re planning for tomorrow. The museum was interesting, but felt a little like “here’s everything we could get that has historical or natural significance.” We walked through a section where we saw an ancient samurai armour next to a standard wool women’s suit. Still managed to see some interesting Maori artifacts and skeletons of extinct native birds. We did see a complete skeleton of a fin whale, but it was in the middle of an exhibition of model ships that served New Zealand so densely packed that no decent pictures were even possible.
Our next stop, Dunedin’s train station, was an abysmal failure. We did show up at the correct station (built in the Flemish style in a city named and founded by Scottish people). We did get to the correct ticketing counter (there’s only the one), but surprised the person in the office by asking for our tickets for tomorrow’s departure. We were told to come on the day of departure, around 30 minutes before, to get it and not before. Silly us, we wanted to be efficient! Still, the building is stunning if not a little out of place in the city (Flemish and Scottish is a weird mix).
Ended our day with dinner at a restaurant in the port of Dunedin. Now, you would think we were going to the nice part of town, next to the water, full of tourists and open-air restaurants. Well, that’s not how Dunedin does it. We’re in the middle of the commercial port, we’ve walked for nearly a kilometre next to construction and export businesses, and, just by the highway onramp, tucked behind it, actually, in a nondescript building from the 1970s with its different coloured glass facade, you’ll find our restaurant for the evening. There’s no mistaking it, we’re in a commercial port where square footage is cheap and where, for some crazy reason, a couple of guys decided to open a fine seafood restaurant. It’s so hipster, even the hipsters haven’t heard about it. However, the food is delicious, so this tale does end well.