A fabulous birthday weekend! Part I

Well, as some of you may know, last Sunday was my birthday. Just for fun, Kimball and I headed for Dunedin, a city 3 hours away. The first thing we did when we got into town was to check out the new Chinese garden. Dunedin's mayor is Chinese and the city's sister city is Shanghai. So this amazing garden, rock waterfalls, bridges, lanterns and all, was built in Shanghai, then disassembled and reassembled after being shipped to Dunedin. Incredible! It was definitely a place I could visit again and again.

Then we drove out of town, to the Otago Peninsula where we caught a boat that took us out to see the sea lions, albatrosses (with a wingspan of 10 feet!), baby seals play fighting, cormorant rookery (where they nest in the hundreds on a steep sloping cliff above the water, balancing their eggs precariously on shelves of straw) and one little blue penguin swimming in the water (who happened to be quite brave and allowed us to get very close to him). What amazing animals!

Next we headed for our favorite place, the Penguin Place, for some good photo-ops of the elusive yellow-eyed penguin. We saw one playing in a freshwater pond, which seemed strange since they usually head out to sea. The others were molting, so had to stay out of the water. They looked like fat down pillows with the stuffing coming out. =)

Finally, starving, we headed to the only place to eat on the peninsula, 1908. A classy little restaurant with local specialties like venison and blue cod. Kimball had the venison and said it was the best he ever had.

Exhausted, we drove about 5 minutes to our little cottage for the night. It was a fisherman's hut back in the 1800's that had recently been converted to an adorable cozy little cottage by a German/Maori couple. We slept so good in the down bed and woke late the next morning to a knock at the door and our hearty German breakfast being delivered in a large basket. 

(No luck getting the rest of the photos to load for this edition so check out facebook for the fun pictures of the cottage, penguins, etc).