Alex visits Dunedin!
Hello blog!
Remember a couple months back when me and my friend Lauren traveled to Auckland to visit our friend Alex? (Refer to Auckland blog post if you have a foggy memory) Well…this time, it was Alex’s turn to come down and visit us in Dunedin for the weekend!
She arrived on Friday afternoon at 3 o’clock (Oct 11th). Me and Lauren picked her up at the airport and of course, we reenacted the iconic ‘run and jump’ greeting from The Bachelor. Reunited and it feels so good!! The three of us drove back to Dunedin and to Lauren’s flat to discover that she was locked out without her keys and her flatmates were at the movies :/ So we ventured to my flat instead, and we drank tea and sat on the couch while catching up on our lives. Alex relayed to us how she had been feeling really lonely at the University of Auckland and she ended up moving rooms because she felt super isolated and scared. She also caught the same man looking through her window three weeks in a row and felt unsafe in her room. So scary! I think she needed a weekend with her gal pals more than Lauren and I did, so it was a blessing that she traveled down to Dunedin for the weekend.
On Friday night, we all cooked dinner together at Lauren’s flat (I made warm kale salad with honey and soy marinated tofu). After dinner, we decided to take Alex out on the town for some good ole Otago partying. However, we did not take the events of the past week into account before making these plans. If you did not see on the news, there was a girl who died at a party at Otago only a couple days prior to Alex’s arrival. The girl was at a party and unfortunately fell down the stairs due to a large crowd of people leaving the party. The girl died tragically and it really shook up the whole campus - especially those who were at the party that night. Since that had happened so recently, there were no parties going on and our plan to take Alex out ended with us watching a movie together in Lauren’s bed. Not an altogether failure of a night, but me and Lauren both wished we could have shown Alex the typical Friday night vibe in Dunedin.
On Saturday, we woke up early and got bagels and coffee from my favorite little spot: Beam Me Up Bagels. After breakfast, the three of us got into Lauren’s car (which is a Honda CRV - shout out to my girl Penelope who is my Honda CRV from back home!! Miss u baby P) and drove three and a half hours to Mt Cook, which is somewhere I’ve been dying to go to for so long!! When we were almost to Mt Cook (like 3 mins away), we could not see a thing. The clouds and the rain were so intense that Mt. Cook wasn’t even visible!! We arrived at the Mt. Cook National Park and it was so dreary; the clouds were thick, the rain was misty and the temperature was COLD. What a bust.
You can imagine my dismay when I arrive at the place I had been dying to visit since arriving here in New Zealand and I couldn’t even make out the outline of the famous mountain range! Even though our spirits were down and the winter weather had squashed our plans a little bit, we decided to walk to Tasman Glacier Lake anyway (since we had already driven the three and a half hours to get there). We walked to the lake and it was still pretty awesome, despite the weather being crappy. The glacier lake is this amazing shade of milky blue and it is cool no matter if the sun is shining or it it is pouring rain. We ate lunch and had more coffee at a cafe near Mt Cook village. I bought a Mt Cook t-shirt because I have zero souvenirs from New Zealand for some reason.
Side note: if you are a close family member or friend and you’re expecting me to bring home a souvenir for you, maybe lower your expectations. I’ve forgotten to even buy myself souvenirs from this amazing place and I’ve lived her for almost 4 months now. Whoops.
Anyways…we did some more short walks around the National Park and we saw some cool, yet slightly foggy scenery. We ate dinner at a nice bar on our way home and I had a veggie burger with fries (yummmm). I offered to drive home because Lauren had driven all the way up from Dunedin and she agreed to let me drive her car (another quick shout out to Honda CRV’s because they are awesome and so easy to drive!). We made the journey home and arrived back in Dunedin at 10:00pm. At Lauren’s, we changed into our PJs (and I put on my new t-shirt) and I forced them to watch Spiderman: Homecoming because they hadn’t seen it and Tom Holland is obviously the cutest thing ever to grace Marvel Universe. Sadly, they were not into it and they both fell asleep halfway through the movie. Typical.
On Sunday morning, we woke up late, ate breakfast and jumped into Lauren’s car (again) to visit some beaches along the Otago Peninsula. First, we went to Tunnel beach because we wanted to show Alex the coastline and Lauren brought her nice camera so we could take cute pictures of each other by the water. After our photoshoot, we were all feeling a bit tired and decided to go home for lunch and a midday nap. On the drive back to Lauren’s, we drove Alex through the city center and the Octagon (which is where all the fun shops and restaurants are) and I saw the movie theatre and had a great idea! I suggested that we go and see Hustler’s instead of taking a nap and the girls agreed! We walked over to the Reading Cinema and bought tickets for Hustler’s, which was starting in 10 minutes! The movie was AMAZING; I really enjoyed it.
Side note: HOW IS JLO 50?!!? What a #queen
After the movie, we wanted to take Alex to Sandfly Bay to see some sea lions, so we drove out to the Peninsula. We spent the next hour messing around on the beach, looking at sea lions and taking pictures. Typical Dunedin things. Once the weather started getting cold and windy, we left the beach and ventured to the grocery store to buy food for dinner. We decided to make homemade pizzas and mine had mushrooms, pesto, sun-dried tomatoes, and spinach on it! We ate dinner together at Lauren’s and I played music on her speaker. The three of us stayed up talking for awhile and then I left to sleep at my flat at 10ish.
On Monday, I woke up early because I had a lot to do before I needed to leave at noon. (To give a little context: I was supposed to be leaving for Bali on that Monday, but my plans changed and I was no longer leaving for Bali with my flatmate Grace. Instead, I had planned to go kayaking in Milford Sound with my friends Amy and Ryan. However, when I made the plans to go kayaking, I didn’t know Alex was going to be in town so it conflicted with her visit. Thus making my morning on that Monday slightly chaotic.) I planned to go get coffee with Grace in the morning so we could catch up on our weekends and I could say goodbye to her before she left for Bali by herself. We walked together to Modaks Coffee Shoppe and we both got iced lattes. It was good to finally sit down and talk with her because she’s the closest friend I’ve made in New Zealand and things had been weird between us ever since I pulled out of the Bali trip so last minute. After our coffee date, Grace left to go sort out a phone plan for herself in Bali and I left to stop at the grocery store for food for Milford. I quickly grabbed food for the two days and made my way to Lauren’s flat so I could say goodbye to Alex. After bidding Alex farewell, I rushed back to my flat to pack quickly and get ready for kayaking before Amy and Ryan picked me up at noon.
Overall, it was a fantastic weekend and we loved having Alex come to visit us! Despite the crappy weather, we made the most of our visit to Mt Cook and had a blast together! It was good to have a small distraction in Dunedin to keep me from feeling sad about my dashed Bali plans.
Thanks for reading :)
