Tunnel Beach and the World's Steepest Street - Recent Adventures of Ramzi and Ramsay

Well, as it is late Thursday morning and I am currently home from work sick with my third illness in the last 4 weeks (I know, right?!) I decided I should use this time to update our blog with our recent comings and goings. 

In the last couple of months we have ventured to two interesting locales in and around Dunedin. The first one we went to was Tunnel Beach. It has this name because in the late 1800s a tunnel was hand carved to give access to the beautiful secluded beach below the cliffs. It was a quick couple hour hike (though steep) and we were happy to find such a neat little gem only a half hour bus ride away! Ok, ok, here are the pictures to show you.

The hand carved tunnel reminded me a little bit of Hezikiah's Tunnel in Israel. The skill and patience to complete such a thing is unimaginable. 

This is the beach the tunnel leads to. The water was freezing but it was beautiful!

Ramzi was the only one brave enough to test out the water. All the Kiwis at the beach with us thought we were so crazy!

More of Ramzi exploring and looking all manly and stuff.

We are so lucky to be living in such a beautiful place!

The next place we visited was after we had realized that Dunedin is home of the world's steepest street! I was little skeptical at first, having to been to places like San Francisco but... after having walked up the so claimed 'World's Steepest Street' I was quite convinced it was true!

You can see the street gets steep quite suddenly. We almost decided not to try to walk up it.

Here's Ramzi demonstrating the steepness. (Note: I got in trouble for this picture because apparently Ramzi was supposed to be LEANING and not just bending at the waist....but I thought he was just being funny. As this picture made it on the blog you can tell that I won that argument.)

There was this cool little mural painted at the top to reward you for making it!

It was cool to sit at the top and watch all the other tourists make their way up the hill and think about why someone would decide to build a house on such a steep hill. 

But as Henry Ward Beecher once said "It's easier to go down a hill than up it but the view is much better at the top."

But just know, if you ever want to claim having walked up the world's steepest street you have to visit Dunedin!

Dunedin is Awesome

Well, we have been living in New Zealand for a little over a year now and....it's a pretty sweet place to live. Specifically Dunedin (the smallish city we live in) is really awesome. Here are some pictures to prove that Dunedin may be one of the coolest places to live.

If you want some history of Dunedin you should check out this Wikipedia Page. But it doesn't quite do it's awesomeness justice, so make sure you look at the rest of this blog post.

In Dunedin, you can find giant inflatable rubber ducks in the parking garage of the grocery store.

You can also find these flowers that I think look like someone painted with water colors with all their different shades.

 

There are great walks not even 5 minutes outside of the city that gives you cool views like this.

Oh, and sheep being everywhere makes things awesome too.

There is also really cool street art around almost every corner. I aspire to be depicted as a penguin someday.

Penguins seem to make really great street art. 

Some of the street art is more serious.

And some has the flair for the fabulous. 

And some of the art is just really interesting. Like this giant fish eating a bunch of ships.

Or this awesome depiction of a musician and instrument painted on the side of a music shop.

This artist felt that you need to wait for the bus with a friendly Scotsman watching over you.

Some artists knit the trees sweaters of the Scottish flag to celebrate the Cricket World Cup.

While others sculpt over breakfast at a cafe like everyone should do it. 

Some artists also like to celebrate dental health by creating teeth sculptures. (10 points to Gryffindor if you can spot Ramzi in this picture)

In addition to the street art, Dunedin's just a really pretty place to live. This is the sunset in the city center just around the corner from our house.

This is in the Botanical Gardens not even a 20 minute walk away.

And this is the beautiful harbor we walk to almost every night to watch the sunset.

Or on the weekends to get some sun. (Ramzi's too manly to need to shade his face from the sun)

This is the train station near our house and directions to a few cool places in the world.

Oh, and did I mention we live lik 5 blocks from the chocolate factory? Sometimes it smells like chocolate when I'm walking to work. 

It's hard to go anywhere and not want to snap of picture of how beautiful everything is. 

Or to start a garden with all the interesting plants around. 

 Needless to say, we're kind of super happy here and are enjoying our Kiwi Adventure while it lasts.

OH, and if you're ever not sure that Dunedin is an awesome place to live, just look at this street art of Roz from Monsters Inc and it won't even be a question. And yes, she's watching you Wazowski.

We're Leaving on a Jet Plane(s)...like really...we've been on 17 separate planes in two months

So, as you can probably tell from the title, we were a little crazy with our travels the last couple months. Here is a map to show you every where we've been the last little bit.

And here's the list of the total distance that we covered. It was just a couple thousand miles shy of the distance it would take to circumnavigate the entire earth.

Look! I even have proof from the NASA website :)

Anyway, here is a smattering of our random adventures over the last little bit:

This is a shot of us flying out of Dunedin, leaving beautiful summer behind. New Zealand is always so beautiful. It kind of makes it hard to go anywhere else.

But it wasn't hard to be packed to the brim with souveniers to bring back to the fam! Every time we fly Air New Zealand we get these lovely orange stickers telling us our luggage is the luggage of bag boys' nightmares. At least it illustrates how to lift with your knees.

On our way home to the mainland we had a ten hour lay over in Hawaii. We rented a convertible and enjoyed the more the perfect day in the sun driving down North shore.

Ramzi's hair is getting long enough we both need hair- ties enjoying the Hawaiin breeze!

Ok, and maybe spending some time in  Hawaii made it a little bit easier to leave Kiwiland for a little bit.

And now onward to our mainland adventures.

This is me gambling for the first on one of our layovers in Vegas. I won $1.80! Oh the joys of being a legal adult.

I finally got to see the Temple Square Christmas Lights in person! Plus, I got to see my sister which was even better!.

Of course we had to get a picture the star AND the Temple :)

We also got to see Ramzi's brother Campbell, who was modeling his Christmas onesie for us! We told him he was totally ahead of the trend. Kiwi's already wear onesies! Even to the grocery store!

This picture (and the next one) kind of illustrate our weirdness and randomness. One night in Utah, we decided to combine all of the pretzels, peanuts, and other snacks from all our flights with our free popcorn, peanutbutter packets, and chocolate we got at our different hotels for a movie night.

It was actually really really delicious. It's nice when snack hoarding actually pays off.

Ok, hopefully none of you are weirded out by dolls because these are really cool. My Grandma has dolls for her daughters and her eldest granddaughters. These ones are Sarah, my mom, and then me on the right!

Here's the whole gang with Grandma, Sarah, Mom, me, Cousin Becca, Aunt Marilyn and Cousing Rachel. And did I mention my Grandma made all of these dolly clothes?! Well, she did, because she's awesome like that.

Here's the four of us (Sarah, Mom, me, and Grandma) modelling Grandma's awesome work.

Sarah and I are pretty lucky to have such cool relatives.

And here is a picture of one of our favorites from Tennesee (where Ramzi's family is). Her name is Rodeo (Rodee for short) and she is madly in love with Ramzi, as evident from this super cute picture.

And this was our New Year's in Knoxville. We sat by the water, listening to the fireworks, and drinking sparkling cider as we welcomed in 2015. It was pretty great.

Oh, and here is me getting a surprise kiss from a camel at an animal ranch in Knoxville. Not a dull moment, let me tell you.

Here's a picture from New York I missed in the last blog post. It was so cold that I would only hold still for one picture. If you squint you see the Statue of Liberty on the horizon.

Oh, and here are the floating lanterns from Tangled in the Disney store in times square. Photo cred, Ramzi, as always.

And this picture kind of sums up our time in Arizona, cactus and the Ramsay's. We stayed with my parents most of the time and Ramzi really got to know my hometown a lot better.

And this was my view at every morning run. Arizona skies are incomproable. 

We also got to get a little outdoorsy. This is me after a dusty ATV ride with my dad. One of the few times I've looked tan! (Well, at least my face does)

This is one of my favorite pictures from our ATV ride through a tunnel under some railroad tracks. You can even see a sagauro or two.

Anyway, two days ago we started heading back to NZ. But we ended up having another layover (this time overnight) in Hawaii. When we're going that way, we just can't help but stop by the island.

We stayed in Waikiki and we got a room with the BEST view!

We even had double windows!

We could see diamond head from our room! We were kind of spoiled.

So we watched the sunset and got ready to head back to our new Island we love, grateful for this chance we got to have some random adventures while seeing and taking care of our familes.

And you know, it's pretty wonderful to be back in Kiwi-land, where we can be as wild as we want ;)

It was a good summer holiday. But we're happy to be back :) We'll keep you updated on our Kiwi adventures soon!