Look at this beautiful ceiling!

And a castle...

My wedding anniversary weekend was so lovely!

And far more history-inspired than I expected. I promised photos—so here they are:

We stopped at a small historic town (Oamaru) to see their buildings carved from white Oamaru Stone.

New Zealand is not old.

Most towns recently celebrated their 150th anniversaries.

We don’t have grand castles and ancient ruins.

Except…

We have Dunedin.

This is as close as it gets to an English royal experience here and my husband Ben and I LOVED it!

Look at that ceiling!

We didn’t realize it, but we’d booked a room designed by a famous 19th century architect in Dunedin, R.A. Lawson.

The house was full of beautiful details and gorgeous ceilings.

My country boy husband pretends he doesn’t like nice things (but I know he secretly loves it).

The architect also designed New Zealand’s only castle. So we had to go see that.

Beautiful rooms and ceilings here too.

(I might have become a little obsessed with ceilings.) See the slightly crazed look in my eyes in the next photo? It’s a gorgeous ceiling-overload-look.

We also did other non-history related things—went ice skating, visited a butterfly house and then went to Wanaka where we explored a puzzle world and navigated a maze (and found out I’m far more determined and competitive than Ben).

See the blue Morpho in the beam of light—how perfect is that!?

Blue Morphos are so beautiful, but it refused to open its wings for a photo.

I almost threw up in the slope room of Wanaka’s Puzzling World!

Dunedin is up there now with one of our favorite places to visit.

What’s the best place you’ve stayed?

By the way, I restarted my second Substack this week—just for fun. I find all sorts of interesting facts when I’m reading and researching and thought I’d share some.

If you want to read 3 interesting things on a Thursday come check it out.