Christmas in Dunedin

I flew down to Dunedin to spend the week of Christmas with friends.The Wellington Airport has some fantastic installations by Weta, promoting the Lord of the Rings and Hobbit movies. The newest is a large Smaug head (it's taller than me). The eyes open, and I forgot that, because this was a domestic flight, I didn't have to worry about going through security, or I would have waited until he reopened his eyes to take the picture. The cool thing is that you can walk right up and touch him, so my new travel ritual is to tickle Smaug before heading off.

The eagle has been restored! I walked under this one when I flew in for the first time when I visited in January. Later that afternoon, there was a 6.3 earthquake and the statue fell. Fortunately, there were no injuries. It was gone when I flew out again, so it was nice to see that it's back. To give you a sense of scale, these are "life-size" in that the Gandalf statue on the second statue is probably pretty close to Ian McKellen size.

More costumes! Here are the actor and scale double costumes for Kili.

Fili's costume.

There's also a big Gollum and some fish over the food court. (this picture is from the January trip, and a different phone)

It was a gorgeous day for my flight, and I was able to take pictures on the flight down. It was fun to be able to look down and be able to identify places that I'd driven through a month earlier.

The week in Dunedin was lovely, my hosts spoiled the heck out of me. I spent the first day there helping out on the taco cart.

This cool old Citroen was in the parking lot.

 The first day was a bit gray, but we had fantastic weather after that.

I was gifted with my very own Christmas hat to wear while running about, which I rather stubbornly wore even though it was much too warm for it. There was also a matching stocking. 

I've probably already posted pictures of this, but I really, really love this park.

I really enjoyed my first Kiwi Christmas, the day before Christmas Eve was spent at a barbecue with friends, and then Christmas Eve was a big house party. At one point there were fourteen people and eight dogs, including three puppies. Unbeknownst to me, my Mom had sent along a poem (The Animal's Christmas Eve), which we had always read as a Christmas tradition, and my hosts and a group of international friends read it in a round for me. The next morning I made coffee cake, also as per family tradition. (my pictures from this week are almost exclusively adorable dogs, but I don't necessarily want to post pictures without owner permission)

The evening of Christmas was spent with more friends, at their house overlooking the ocean. The views were kind of not bad.

(this was an accidental picture, but I think it's pretty.)

One of the house dogs in Dunedin is a mix that may or may not include border collie, and my friends were curious as to how he would react when confronted with sheep. The young one, who, bless him, is very camera shy, wasn't particularly interested in the sheep. His older brother, a chow/rottweiler/kitchen sink mix, surprised us all by taking to sheep herding like a duck to water.

We tried to leave the grande dame, who is 13 years old, at the house because the terrain was rugged and the grass high and thick. She, however, was having NONE of that, and came out to play. Quite an impressive feat for this lovely lady.

I had a really lovely week in Dunedin, though I did pick up a head cold, which was not a whole lot of fun on the plane ride back. There were some cool cloud formations, though.