Wed, Dec 25 - Christmas Day from Dunedin to Auckland

Merry Christmas breakfast!!

We had a jolly Christmas breakfast, complete with Christmas crackers with paper crowns provided by the very nice hosts at this motel, packed up and left at 9:30.  It was raining, of course, but we headed back to  Hooper Lagoon on the south side of the Otago Peninsula and birded from the car seeing lots of ducks, Stilts and Royal Spoonbills.

Royal Spoonbills ruffled in the wind

Immature Pied Stilt

One more colorful bus stop

At 11 we drove into the city of Dunedin and parked in the central downtown hexagon consisting of a park surrounded by shops, cafes and churches and a statue of Robert Burns, as Dunedin was settled by Scots and still retains a close connection with the home country.

It stopped raining as we walked down George St, the main shopping boulevard.  There were many old buildings fixed up and painted pretty colors with shops on the first floor.  We walked up to the University of Otago looking for a café for lunch but could only find a couple small Chinese ones.  We returned to the city center and found one bar café open and had a pizza and an Christmassy open face turkey sandwich for Bob.

Downtown Dunedin

Dunedin's ornate railroad station

We gassed up and drove out to the airport, turned in our very comfortable Rav 4, and checked in to our flight to Auckland.  We took off at five and immediately lost sight of the land as we entered the clouds.  We had reserved seats 18F, 19F and 20F so we could all get good views of as we crossed almost the entire country, but the only clear views we got were when we crossed the Cook Strait which were remarkable but short.

Marlborough Sounds

We landed in Auckland at 6:30 and got a taxi downtown to our hotel, the Crowne Plaza, and thanks to Ms Hamlin’s many hotel points, got very nice rooms on the 26th floor.   We met in the bar for a light dinner and had drinks, chicken tenders for Bob, BLT (with fried egg) for Hil and a ½ dozen oysters for me!  Yumm!  We’re going to sleep in and explore Auckland tomorrow.