Happy birthday Anthony! We planned to do a very scottish day for Anth sp stop one was to go to the scottish shop. We picked up a present for him and then gabbed a coffee and some shortbread and then we were on our way to our first stop of the Larnach castle.
Larnach Castle was built in 1871 by William Larnach, merchant baron and politician, for his beloved first wife Eliza. It took more than 200 workmen three years to build the Castle shell and master European craftsmen spent a further 12 years embellishing the interior. Larnach spared no expense on his dream home, which features the finest materials from around the world.
We decided to go to the gift shop as our first stop as Anthony has been looking for a scottish hat. Luckiy we found one so we were ready to explore the castle.
We headed to the ballroom cafe for lunch first. The cafe is set up in the old ballroom and is really atmospheric. We had some scones and tea!
We then explored the inside of the castle. The Baker family who bought the castle in 1967 have been restoring the castle and they have done and amazing job the place is beautiful.
After walking around and having a look at everything it was time to head down to our penguin tour. We headed to penguin place now called the OPERA to do a tour out to try and seethe yellow eyes penguins. The yellow-eyed penguin is also known as hoiho, is a species of penguin endemic to New Zealand and only on the South island. These are the most endangered penguin in the world. We started the tour in a classroom learning the issues the Hoiho face. We were told that the last hohio from the rehab centre was being released today and we were going to get to see it realeased.
We then hopped into some vans and were driven through the private property of OPERA. It was school seeing all the reforesting and fixing of the land they are doing for the penguins and other native animals. Before we knew it we were down in some hides and got to watch the little teeny yellow penguin get released back to the wild.
We then got to go for a walk along the cliffs and see some seals and little blue penguins. We also got to use our binoculars to see 2 more yellow penguins come in to shore. It was really amazing and were were so lucky to see such rare birds. We also got to see the most amazing sunset as we got back from the tour.
For Anthonys birthday he chose steak for dinner so we ended our night at Prohibition Smokehouse for a very delicious steak meal. It was a pretty good day.
