On to Port Chalmers

We arrived early in the morning and, after breakfast, E and I set out exploring Port Chalmers.  We wondered up and down the streets circling around and back to the cruise boat where we caught the shuttle to Dunedin.  More about Dunedin tomorrow...today let me take you to Port Chalmers. 

 Many of the yards had flowers growing and my favorite, the hydrangea, does very well here.  I have the worst luck with them here so soaked in the memories for later retrieval.

 We were told that many of the antarctic expeditions provisioned and departed from Port Chalmers.

After our brief tour of Dunedin, we joined our afternoon tour, Historic Pubs of (what we thought was to include Dunedin but didn't) of Port Chalmers.  While our tour guide, Peter, was very knowledgeable about the four pubs we visited and the town, it was disappointing and, for the money, not a good deal at all.  We signed up for it so we went and continued through all four.  We did leave the last one after only one beer as some of the members of our group were getting more and more obnoxious the more they drank.

Our first stop was  a pub in a hotel.  It was nicely decorated and the pub bar was fun to see.  We were given small pitchers of beer on assorted tables but the tables filled up fast and some of the members of our group got immediately territorial over the beer.  We moved out to the terraced back and enjoyed the flowers and conversation with some of the locals til it was time to move on.  I am not sure why the plaque on the building said Dunedin and there always the chance this photo is out of order.

Our second stop was another old hotel where someone was supposedly murdered for sleeping with another man's wife.  I think there is a place here in Tarpon Springs with that same story...lol.
 The second pub was run down rather than 'historic' with ply wood fronts on the bar, torn and patched seats and, for some reason, we lingered here the longest.

 Emerson beer turned out to be our favorite of all the ones we tasted.  We figured out later that each beer cost us about 12-15 dollars each which is why, in addition to the questionable "historic" part, we did not feel this tour lived up to its billing.

 Now the third pub we loved.  We hiked down to Carey's Bay Historic Hotel ("restaurant and bar by the sea" ) and were delighted.  The tour that left right before ours was dining out in the lovely courtyard and there were only about ten people in the tour.  Ours had twenty and we were crammed into the pool room inside.  There was barely enough seats for all of us to sit down and then the fact that two of the people in our group decided to play pool in the cramped circumstances made eating our 'meal' and having a beer difficult to say the least.

The view was lovely and our food was excellent.  E and I were very tempted to stop our tour right there and just linger and loiter after the group had moved on but we persevered.  Carey's Bay is a pretty area of town with some interesting homes around the bay.

Our last pub was the Tunnel Pub and Hotel which was next to, you guessed it, the rail road tunnel through town. 

We had one beer here and headed back to the ship.  My Dunedin pictures seemed to have taken a powder but hopefully I 'll be able to find them by this time tomorrow.  I am not happy with the new blogger and the way I have to create web albums to post pictures now...