The Edinburgh of the South! I've been through Dunedin a couple of times but hadn't actually spend any time there. We were always being told we had to go visit - "It will remind you so much of home!" but aside from the Scottish heritage, there's loads of other stuff going on down there. The weather was still pretty mince when we arrived to we headed into town to check out some of the bars.
The weather finally improved on the Sunday so we got out for a wander around the sights. Dunedin railway station...
Dunedin's biggest industry is tertiary education, with Otago University and and a heap of smaller colleges making up over 20% of the city's population. It's quite a place. Known affectionately as Scarfies, Dunedin's students live in an area around the infamous Castle Street just outside Otago University in some of the most expensive yet worst housing conditions in the city. There is real notoriety to Castle Street, with houses being named and passed down through the years. They're awful: freezing cold in the winter and some even still have outside toilets. We went for a wander around and as it was holidays the place was like ghost town. No normal people would pay money to live in these houses outside of term time, but the Scarfies love them. Some look like they're only good for demolition but, amazingly, have "Already rented in 2012" stickers on them. Madness.
The house below (660) is particularly famous as it's where the New Zealand band Six60 lived when they were students in Dunedin and they even recoded here. If you're a keen reader of the blog, you may remember Iain and I went to see one of their gigs during the summer. Link to that blog post here! One of there most famous (best!) song's video was shot at the house. You can see it if you click here.
I was loving some of the street names! The building at the bottom is Otago Uni - kinda reminded me of Glasgow Uni. With the weather to match.
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