Australia and New Zealand Cruise – Dunedin

 

On Halloween night we ran into a magician on board who stopped us and asked if the kids liked magic. He introduced himself and told us he’d be the onboard entertainer in the main theatre in a couple of nights and that he had an all ages magic show that we should bring the kids to. We’d been waiting on board for a magician so the kids were super excited. We saw he was on the bill for last night and pulled the kids out of kid’s club to go.

We got there early and despite Peter’s paranoia about sitting close we snagged close seats. About 10 minutes into the show he pulled both boys up on stage and then told them he only really needed one kid up there and to fight it out to see who lasted longest. Grant and Henry looked at each other completely confused and then for whatever reason Grant started making moose ears and walking like a zombie and just doing weird show offy things. The magician laughed and made some jokes and then sent Grant back to his seat and kept Henry onstage. He did a trick where he had Henry open his hand over this metal bucket and a coin clinked out of his hand into the bucket and completely surprised Henry. He then went nuts shaking his hands into the bucket while coins were clinking all over, having him lift his pant leg where it appeared coins were falling out, and then making it seem like he was pooping a ton of coins into the bucket. It was really cute and the crowd loved it and it elevated the boy’s status on board to super celebrity. Today we didn’t walk more than half a block in any direction without people stopping to tell the boys that they were GREAT at the magic show, and if they didn’t know them from that they knew the boys from Halloween.

In Dunedin today we went to Cadbury World and did a tour of the chocolate factory. You get little samples all the way through the tour and leave with about 2-3 mini chocolate bars and 2 full size bars. If you’re two little boys who have been spoiled for 30+ days on a cruise ship, apparently the workers in the Cadbury factory apparently are taken with your cuteness and decide that you need a HUGE filled Cadbury chocolate egg EACH. It was so large it barely fit in the little baggie they provided to everyone for their free samples. On the way out a different tour guide saw them with their eggs and stopped to tell me she’d been a tour guide for years and no one in her group had EVER gotten a chocolate egg and that it was really special. These boys live a truly charmed life.

Boys in the Cadbury van and Grant in front of a mountain of his favourite Cadbury snack!

After the choco-fest we walked over to this museum to check mail and to maybe spend 20 min walking around and head back. The museum was Otago Early Settlers museum and was fantastic. They had amazing interactive displays and covered everything from the first Maori settlers to modern times. We saw insane tiny rowboats that were used for whaling(?!), along with interactive plasma screens showing earliest recorded photos of the area that you could zoom in and have a really good look at, all the way to WW2 memorabilia, trams, the first computer in the area that took up an entire room, the first ELSIE machine, Ataris, just everything and it was amazingly restored and kept. Peter was fascinated with all the old techie bits and I had a good laugh at some of the old advertisements for housewives and just these insanely well preserved appliances. The entire museum was so well done we could have easily spent the better part of a day there but we ended up extending our 20 minutes to about 2 hours.

The ELSIE random number selector from the UK Premium Bonds – amazed to find this in Dunedin!

We went back to the ship and saw a few albatross on the sail out while we were having dinner. Overall a really good day out. The boys are exhausted and so are we so it’s an early night for all of us.  Tomorrow Akaroa and meeting up with Peter’s family for the day!

 

Loved this sign in Dunedin today!