The harbor and ocean from Belleknowes

After 11 weeks in a charming granny flat (as they say in New Zealand) or mother-in-law apartment (as they say in the U.S.), we're moving this afternoon to another AirBnB. I've taken 75 photos of the amazing view, and I'll show you some of them. First, a view of our place from below. The house is more than 100 years old, and the upstairs addition, where we're staying, was added in the late 90s for a granny/mother-in-law. That window has been the joy of my life for the past 11 weeks. You can see a desk in the window. That's where Dave paints. There's a sofa to the right of the desk (from this view), and when I lie on the sofa to read, I can see the harbor and ocean out the window through the legs of his desk! Be sure to notice the big cabbage tree a bit to the left of the house (looks like a yucca on a stick). The cabbage tree is a lovely part of our view.

Dave painted his desk and the view. The view is to the southeast. The water to the right is the ocean, and if you turned a little to the right in a boat, the next stop would be Antarctica in about 3,000 miles. That's a lot of ocean, and a lot of wind swirling over that ocean. Dunedin is the windiest place I've ever lived for sure. The body of water that looks like a lake is actually the Otago Harbour. If you got in a boat in the harbor and went ten miles to the left, you'd arrive at the ocean. The last piece of land on your right at the very end of the harbor would be Taiaroa Head, where albatrosses nest, which I wrote about in an earlier post (which gives a view of the harbor from a 2000 ft high hill). Downtown Dunedin is a little bit to the left outside of this view, and the university where I taught is a little further to the left.

If you look out the window a bit further to the left, you can see a slice of the harbor, looking like a river. 

The living room has a side window, too, with a view to St Clair Beach on the ocean. The funny thing about this view is that with binoculars you can see the buildings at St Clair. In December 2007, our son Mike spend a month with us at Christmas, and he wrote a masters thesis in a St Clair cafe that we can see from here with Dave's famous binoculars. In that lovely month we had with Mike, he rode Dave's bicycle to St Clair every day to write.

Now comes the hard part. I have to choose among dozens of photos of the harbor and ocean. When we first got here in late January (summer), the sun was rising straight out our window very early in the morning. More recently it has been rising further to the left. I'm going to show you the many moods of the harbor, water and ocean that I have loved so much. 

Just so you don't think the light is amazing all the time, I'll end with a photo of probably the most common view -- lots of clouds -- plus the humorous paint job on the house right below us.