Cruise - Day 5 - Port Chalmers / Dunedin

Finally we get to go on land. In our minds, a cruise is about the ports as much as the ship so getting stuck on the ship for three straight days feels very unnatural.

We have a relatively short day in port today so we want to start out early. On the other hand, we don't want to fight with the people going on excursions. They usually are the first to get out. The ship docks in Port Chalmers bit we will spend the day in Dunedin, about 15 km away. We met up in the piazza and got to the shuttle bus without any problems. Shuttle bus charge $20 to Dunedin is a bit expensive for a 20-min ride but what can you do, we can't walk 3 hours to get there.

Dunedin is simple enough with one major thoroughfare across the city. Almost everything is along George Street or a block from it.  I found it a bit  surprising that it has a few museums and a university for such a small city of 130,000.

Downtown is easy to navigate but we want to go visit Baldwin Street, the steepest street in the world. All you have to do, is to follow George Street. Along the way, we visited the Botanic Garden of Dunedin. It seems that every city in New Zealand has a Botanic Garden.  The garden is much bigger than I thought but we had to limit the time in order to go to Baldwin Street. All in all, it took a bit more than an hour's walk from the Octagon.

Baldwin Street is worth the visit. It is indeed very steep in one stretch. Three of us walked all the way to the top. Although steep, the stretch is not very long so it is perfectly manageable. It was a bit hairy walking back down with the drizzle getting the pavement a bit damp.

We then walked back to the train station before getting back via the shuttle. The train station looks fantastic on the outside. The train hall was surprisingly small. We are not sure what the other part of the train station went. A beautiful structure but still a bit disappointing.

This was a good walking day but may be too much for the uninitiated. About half of the group chose to take the bus back to the shuttle rather than walk. They avoided the rain that came not much after we started to walk back from Baldwin Street. It was nevertheless a very pleasant day, even the rain could not dampen the spirits too much.

Glass floor

Port Chalmers

World's steepest street

Dunedin train station