Our travels continue! After we left Oamaru, we drove straight to beautiful and hilly Dunedin. Dunedin is a fabulous city, which actually reminded us a lot of Chicago in certain ways. It's fitting therefore that this is where Kara and I both had our first real pangs of homesickness. Ah, to be able to sleep in our own beds! Ah, to be able to afford to go out to eat! (SOB. SOOOOB.)
We stayed at an absolutely adorable Harry Potter themed hostel called Hogwartz. It had TONS of space and comfortable beds, so it was a nice place from which to explore the city. Dunedin is all hills and Hogwartz was right at the top of one, so we got our exercise! The hostel was very crowded, and yet again we made some friends and got some great advice for our continuing travels. :) There was a very comfortable reading loft too, which I especially enjoyed! (We had to contend with a slightly younger crowd this time around though... Oh, younguns on a Saturday night.)
Dunedin is laid out so that the main center of the city is the Octagon, which Hogwartz was just a few minutes walk from. We spent the majority of our time in the city wandering around this area and visiting some of the awesome free museums. One of the interesting things about New Zealand, though, is that businesses close during the holidays for a much longer time. We were in Dunedin from the 2nd-5th, and a lot of places were closed through the 6th!