Day 3- Dunedin Part 1

Maggie here.

This day was packed.  We woke up to storm clouds and rain, making us a little apprehensive for the day's activities.  Nothing like walking around in the rain with a baby.  Turns out, this was one of my favorite days!  To summarize: castle, beach, sea lions, beach, penguin, beach, and...Subway?

To start, nothing like waking up in the back of a van to storm clouds.  By the end of the trip we had our mornings down to a rhythm, but the beginning was a bit rough.  What to take to the bathroom at the other end of the Holiday Park?  Who goes first while the other watches James?  Okay, you go while I convert the car back to driving mode.  Whoops, forgot my toothbrush.  Back again.  Rats, left my towel.  Looks like I'm pat drying with toilet paper.  Hmm, where to change clothes?  Everything in the shower stall is wet, including the bench where I'm supposed to set my clothes.  Where to put James while converting the car?  Down on the grass.  What's he eating?  A leaf?  We're going to go ahead and call that a vegetable.

First stop, Larnach Castle.  Beautiful castle and gardens in the middle of nowhere on the Otago Peninsula.  The South Island is divided into 6 regions, and the majority of our time was spent in Otago, which encompasses Dunedin and Catlins on the east coast, over to Queenstown and Wanaka on the west-ish coast.

The castle was absolutely lovely.  It was originally built in the 1860-1870s by William Larnach when he arrived from England with his family to manage the bank branch that oversaw the goldfields.  New Zealand had its own 'gold rush' around this time, and many cities and towns on the South Island have their fingers in the gold rush history pie.  William was his own character, marrying three times.  His first wife died of 'mysterious causes' before he married her younger sister.  Dundundun.  Upon his death, legal battles among the children led to the property being sold.  Nuns' retreat, lunatic asylum, soldier refuge, sheep pen.  It fell into severe disrepair before being purchased and painstakingly restored by the Baker family in the 1960s.

Grabbed this pic from their website.  No helicopter rides for us.

How do you build a castle in the middle of nowhere you ask?  Easy peasy.  You employ 300 workers for 3 years to build the outside, using materials from all over the world brought up the mountainside via ox cart after arriving by ship, then spend 12 years embellishing the inside.  This ceiling alone took 3 woodcarvers 6 years to complete.

The inside was beautiful with gardens to match.

The spiral staircase banister was not steam-curved but carved in that shape straight out of a kauri tree, which is NZ native tree that is largely protected now.

That's a lot of tree.

  

Ballroom

They used rakes to etch patterns in the gravel out front.  I thought it was super cool but Lance was unimpressed.  He thought it was weird that I took a picture of a man raking.

The view from the parapets wasn't half bad, either.

He's too young to be embarrassed of me already!