I had tonnes planned out for this week with the kids, actually going to the effort to have set activities each day! Unfortunately, on Tuesday Cillian came down with a sickness bug which meant the rest of the week we had a sick week. We watched movies and played a few games, but it wasn't until Thursday when he seemed to be getting better, and he was totally fine by Friday but had to stay off kindy because of the 48 hour rule! Luckily that was up before the afternoon so we met the au pairs and went to football practice as usual that afternoon!
Friday evening I slept over at Fabienne's with Sabrina and Julia as we were heading off to Dunedin in the morning. Julia brought some German sweets and they're my new favourite thing! So yummy! We then pretty much snacked and binge watched catfish for the rest of the evening!
We had a pretty chilled out start to the day, we planned to meet Anka in Oamaru to see the penguins, despite repeatedly saying they wouldn't be there as it was the wrong time of the day but never mind! We saw a few seals though, and a wee seal pup too which was pretty cute! Another seal was just chilling out on the seats, which meant we had to be a bit wary as they can be pretty vicious.
It took us a while to find Anka, and when we did we decided to go and play on the steam punk playground - as, naturally, that is what Au Pairs do!
We then made our way down to Dunedin, stopping off at the K Mart on the way. We checked in to our hostel, about a 15 minute walk away from the centre and, the best thing about it, it was called Hogwartz. I was expecting it to have been decorated a bit more in a Harry Potter theme, but there were a few bits and pieces here and there as a reminder! My personal favourite being the Dobby picture!
After putting our bits in our dorm, we headed into town to have a wander and to grab some food it was nice to be able to see Dunedin in the day light as I didn't spend much time here on the Contiki. We headed to the train station, as a couple of the others wanted to check it out, and there was a wedding going on there, seemed pretty random but was quite cool!
After getting ready at the hostel, Fabienne, Sabrina and I walked down to the stadium to watch the
Highlanders v Waratahs game. Despite growing up in a family full of rugby fans this was the first time I've actually gone to a live rugby game.. and I loved it! Granted, I was a tad rusty on the rules, but I was pleasantly surprised in how I could actually understand what was happening and the last ten minutes were so intense it was amazing!We went out for a bit after the game, but we seemed to get to the bars at the wrong time as everywhere was pretty quiet and not much seemed to be going on, until we decided to head home just before midnight... there was then queues to get in the places we had already been! Typical! But to be fair we were all shattered anyway and I had literally no money left in my budget to drink like I would've wanted to anyway!!
After checking out Sunday morning, we headed to the Cadbury factory and yes, I did the tour again! Although I came out with significantly less chocolate this time which sucked! Still loved it though!
We then headed towards Tunnel Beach which reminded me of Durdle Door! The weather was beautiful, albeit slightly on the colder side! It's a truly beautiful beach and I would've liked to stay longer but I didn't have any food so we went back into Dunedin.
There were a few more places we wanted to stop off at, but we went the wrong way for one of the beaches (I had misheard the name of the beach!) and could not find the elephant rocks, but we stopped off for dominos on the way home to get a trusty $5 pizza!
The next few days pretty much consisted of packing and entertaining the kids before holiday! I didn't have much planned as I thought we'd just chill out and go with the flow for he last few days as the boys excitement levels were through the roof!
