Day 1: After
leaving the boulders, we continued on our way to Dunedin. It was really
exciting driving into this town because it was a beautiful day and it had some
really pretty buildings. Since we went to the boulders so early, we arrived too
early to check into our hostile right away. First we tried to find WiFi since
we didn’t even know where our hostile was in Dunedin. It was also Easter back
in the States, so I was planning on FaceTiming my parents. We finally drove
around the city until we found a Burger King and got some WiFi. Unfortunately
FaceTime didn’t work, but we were still able to look up everything we needed to
do that day.
The
first thing we decided to go and do was visit the Cadbury Factory. It was
pretty cute on the inside before taking the tour. Courtney, Shaina, and I all
love chocolate, so it was the perfect activity for us. Unfortunately since it
was a holiday (since the Monday after Easter is considered a holiday at many
businesses) the factory part wasn’t open, so we didn’t get to see any of the
chocolate being made, but we still got to go on a shorter tour. We started off
with a little video explaining the background of how Cadbury wound up in
Dunedin and then saw some clips of the factory. Then we headed outside where we
had to put our cameras away. We went inside to a little hall that had the
process shown about how different chocolates are made. It was really interesting
seeing the different ingredients like cocoa powder, cocoa mass, and cocoa
butter, and how different amounts of each make the different chocolates like
dark, milk, or white. I never really considered the process of making the
different chocolates before, so it was really interesting. Then we headed to
two huge silos that had been used way back when the factory first opened. We
walked all the way to the top, and at the top we got to see HUGE chocolate
waterfall. Our guide said that the same chocolate in the water fall just gets
pumped back up to fall every half hour or so, so I know it’s just for the
tourists’ benefit but I still thought it was cool. Next we got to learn about
the different kinds of chocolate that are made in the different factories. There
is the one factory in Dunedin where different Cadbury chocolates are made,
there are two factories I believe in Australia, and one factory in England I
think. The different factories make different chocolates and then trade with
other countries. Plus, there are also some chocolates that are only sold in New
Zealand and not anywhere else. It’s a pretty good system they got working. Once
we were done with that we got to go and taste some liquid chocolate. It was
AMAZING! It was already melted, but it basically melted even more in your mouth
if that was possible. It was delicious. Unfortunately that was the end of our
tour, but we got to grab our cameras and take pictures of a couple of the older
cars that used to drive around town way back when.
Since
it was still late morning, we drove to the Otago Peninsula to go and see New
Zealand’s one and only castle, the Larnach Castle!
Now, I don’t really know what makes a castle be able to be defined as a castle because this one does not look like the kind of castles I’ve seen in pictures. It was still really cool to go up and look at it. There was a really nice garden that was being mimicked by the garden in Alice in Wonderland.
The view from one of the lookouts of the castle was absolutely amazing, and we learned that that specific view was the reason why Larnach built the castle there for his wife in the first place. Then we got to go inside of the castle. The castle was abandoned many many years ago, and it was re-bought by another family back in the 50’s I believe. They fixed it up to look like it had before and now the family still lives in one part of it. The rest is where tourists can go. We had to walk up the main steps and then ring a doorbell where we were welcomed inside by a very dapper looking older gentleman.
It was pretty exciting. You can choose to buy a headset that takes you on a guided tour of the castle and talks about things in your ear, but that cost money so we just took a pamphlet where we could read through the guided tour. We got to see a bunch of rooms such as a study, a parlor, a dining room, a library, a dressing room, a couple bathrooms, a room where the woman would have tea together, and multiple different bedrooms. You got to walk up a beautiful spiral staircase as well to get to the different floors. Then we got to go out onto the roof. It definitely felt really castle-y up there and the view was amazing. Although this castle was different than what I was picturing a castle to be, it was still a lot of fun!
Now, I don’t really know what makes a castle be able to be defined as a castle because this one does not look like the kind of castles I’ve seen in pictures. It was still really cool to go up and look at it. There was a really nice garden that was being mimicked by the garden in Alice in Wonderland.
The view from one of the lookouts of the castle was absolutely amazing, and we learned that that specific view was the reason why Larnach built the castle there for his wife in the first place. Then we got to go inside of the castle. The castle was abandoned many many years ago, and it was re-bought by another family back in the 50’s I believe. They fixed it up to look like it had before and now the family still lives in one part of it. The rest is where tourists can go. We had to walk up the main steps and then ring a doorbell where we were welcomed inside by a very dapper looking older gentleman.
It was pretty exciting. You can choose to buy a headset that takes you on a guided tour of the castle and talks about things in your ear, but that cost money so we just took a pamphlet where we could read through the guided tour. We got to see a bunch of rooms such as a study, a parlor, a dining room, a library, a dressing room, a couple bathrooms, a room where the woman would have tea together, and multiple different bedrooms. You got to walk up a beautiful spiral staircase as well to get to the different floors. Then we got to go out onto the roof. It definitely felt really castle-y up there and the view was amazing. Although this castle was different than what I was picturing a castle to be, it was still a lot of fun!
After
the castle it was lunch time, so we drove back down the coast to MacAndrew Bay
to eat lunch. One of the teachers from Thames High used to live in Dunedin, so
she gave us suggestions on good places to eat. It was a nice relaxing bay where
we could eat our lunch. Very relaxing.
Then
we headed back into town to go on a Speights Brewery tour. Speights is an
extremely common beer here in NZ and I had never been on a brewery tour before,
so I was excited to go.
We began our tour learning about the history of how the factory came to be. It was a lot more detailed than our Cadbury tour. Our guide used to be a history teacher in Canada who I bet was a great teacher because you could tell how passionate he was about sharing his stories with us. Basically some guy named Captain Cook (who I think is a pretty big deal here in NZ) made some beer for his sailors/crew men to help them get the nutrients they needed while on the boat so they didn’t get sick. Then some other guy named Speights (who had a lot of money but new nothing about brewing beer) got together with two brewers in an “equal partnership” (although the man with the money was the one who’s name was on the company).
Then after learning about that we got to visit the different parts of the factory where the beer is made. I was listening but I really don’t remember much about it. I know there are like five steps (which are the five huge tanks seen) with which the beer is made, but I don’t really remember details. We got to learn the different ingredients that go into beer such as hops and even sugar (which is eventually turned into alcohol). It was pretty cool. It was a very detailed tour and our guide was amazing because he just loved talking about it. We even got to learn about how the walls are made with these huge iron grids within them to make them durable in earthquakes. The building itself is made within a hill, so we entered on the first level, but you could exit the building on the eight floor if you wished farther up the hill.
Speights Golden Medal Ale is their most popular beer. It used to just be called Speights I believe until it won the gold medal in a huge beer competition in Australia, so they changed the name to have Golden Medal in it. This victory was huge for the success of Speights over the many other breweries in Dunedin at the time because it gave Speights the spark to attract people to his beer. It turns out that Speights ended up dying of liver failure, so our guide told us that that is why sailors would buy Speights. They assumed if the man who made Speights died from drinking his own alcohol, it must be pretty strong (interesting logic..). We got to hang out in the room and try the other beers such as a golden lager, a pilsner, some cider, and a darker beer. It was a pretty fun experience because I had never gotten to do anything like that, and it was extremely informative which was cool.
We began our tour learning about the history of how the factory came to be. It was a lot more detailed than our Cadbury tour. Our guide used to be a history teacher in Canada who I bet was a great teacher because you could tell how passionate he was about sharing his stories with us. Basically some guy named Captain Cook (who I think is a pretty big deal here in NZ) made some beer for his sailors/crew men to help them get the nutrients they needed while on the boat so they didn’t get sick. Then some other guy named Speights (who had a lot of money but new nothing about brewing beer) got together with two brewers in an “equal partnership” (although the man with the money was the one who’s name was on the company).
Then after learning about that we got to visit the different parts of the factory where the beer is made. I was listening but I really don’t remember much about it. I know there are like five steps (which are the five huge tanks seen) with which the beer is made, but I don’t really remember details. We got to learn the different ingredients that go into beer such as hops and even sugar (which is eventually turned into alcohol). It was pretty cool. It was a very detailed tour and our guide was amazing because he just loved talking about it. We even got to learn about how the walls are made with these huge iron grids within them to make them durable in earthquakes. The building itself is made within a hill, so we entered on the first level, but you could exit the building on the eight floor if you wished farther up the hill.
Speights Golden Medal Ale is their most popular beer. It used to just be called Speights I believe until it won the gold medal in a huge beer competition in Australia, so they changed the name to have Golden Medal in it. This victory was huge for the success of Speights over the many other breweries in Dunedin at the time because it gave Speights the spark to attract people to his beer. It turns out that Speights ended up dying of liver failure, so our guide told us that that is why sailors would buy Speights. They assumed if the man who made Speights died from drinking his own alcohol, it must be pretty strong (interesting logic..). We got to hang out in the room and try the other beers such as a golden lager, a pilsner, some cider, and a darker beer. It was a pretty fun experience because I had never gotten to do anything like that, and it was extremely informative which was cool.
It
was finally time to check into our hostile at Central Backpackers (named I’m
sure since it was basically in the center of Dunedin). We were sharing the room
with 5 other people, so we didn’t really want to hang out there much. For
dinner, we had heard about this pizza place called Hell’s Pizza.
Their big advertisement at the moment is on pizza made with rabbit meat. They had put up a billboard covered COMPLETELY in rabbit fur that said something like “our pizza is as real as this billboard”. Pretty disturbing. When we went, we avoided the bunny pizza and just got the regular kinds of meat. It was pretty funny though because they had signs with the Easter bunny on them with sad phrases about how their being turned into pizza. It was an experience, let me say that.
Their big advertisement at the moment is on pizza made with rabbit meat. They had put up a billboard covered COMPLETELY in rabbit fur that said something like “our pizza is as real as this billboard”. Pretty disturbing. When we went, we avoided the bunny pizza and just got the regular kinds of meat. It was pretty funny though because they had signs with the Easter bunny on them with sad phrases about how their being turned into pizza. It was an experience, let me say that.
Then
we went back to the hostile and just chilled out and went to sleep. After
waking up at 5:30 in the morning to see the boulders and then going on all of
those tours, we were extremely tired. It definitely was a successful day in
Dunedin and we got to check a lot of activities off our list of things to do!
Day 2:
On Tuesday, we spent a second day in Dunedin. We were able to sleep in instead of waking up at 530 like the day before, however we knew we had a busy day planned, so we didn't sleep in too late. We ate breakfast at our hostile and then headed to some shops in the Octagon.
Then after shopping a little bit we went to the Train Station which was an absolute beautiful building. We don't have that cool of architecture back home, so that's one of the reasons I loved this town. So many of the buildings had this historic look to them that was really pretty. The train station is a working station where people can purchase tickets to ride around the area.
Inside the station you could obviously buy tickets and things, but you can also go and look at a free art gallery which is pretty cool. You couldn't take pictures for obvious reasons, but it was cool since I've never been in a legit art gallery before to look at people's work. You can also go into some sort of sports hall of fame where they focus a lot on rugby. We didn't go there because it cost money and we didn't think it was worth it.
After the campus, we decided to go and walk to Otago University. It was a few blocks down and we didn't really know where it was, but we knew the general direction. New Zealand calls their high school "college" and their universities just "university" or "uni", so we weren't sure if we were at the right place when we found one of the schools. It seemed like it had more buildings than a regular high school would, but it didn't seem very college campus-y. We kept walking and eventually found what we were looking for. The college was really cool. It had really pretty gray-stoned buildings and plenty of huge trees.
It was Easter Break still when we were there, so there weren't any students really walking around campus. Some of the buildings were locked, but we were able to find the Math and Stats building which was unlocked! We walked up to the Math and Stats Department and had a look at the office and where the classrooms were. We couldn't go too far or really inside any of the other rooms besides the main hallway, but we still got to look. The inside of the buildings seemed pretty similar and modern to how the inside of our offices and buildings look. Overall it was a really pretty campus and we were there at the perfect time because all the trees were changing color.
We were told that the South is known for their cheese rolls, so we went on a trek to go and find some. Unfortunately we were told false directions and ended up walking all around, but eventually we found a bakery that had them! Essentially it was like a rolled up grilled cheese with like a chive and onion cream cheese on it, but we were hungry and they tasted fabulous. After this little snack we went back to the hostile to eat lunch and then headed out for more adventures.
Baldwin Street was next on our list. It is the WORLD's steepest street! I think they said it is at about a 34% grade or something like that.
It may not seem that steep in the picture, but it definitely is! Of course we had to walk up it. It was funny watching cars drive up it because they just gunned it at the bottom to get to the top. There wasn't really anything to do there, but it was your classic tourist attraction (plus it was free!).
Next we went to the Settlers Museum. It was a really cool museum because it started way back with the origins of people coming here and made its way through history. It was crazy huge. There were so many different interactive things people could do to learn all the different facts. One room I thought was cool was just a room full of pictures. You could sit down at a little desk that had a touch-screen monitor. Then you choose a wall and can click on any of the pictures and learn about the people in the pictures.
There were a bunch of rooms like this. There was always some video playing, some headset to put on and listen to, or some computer around to explore the different items. After looking through the history of the people and how the towns came to be, you could go through and look at progression of different household items and cars. There was a room that showed really old appliances and electronics, and then one that showed some older cars.
We only spent like an hour there, but you could honestly spend an entire day there reading about everything. We didn't really have the patience to sit and read everything, so we mostly just looked around. It was still really cool though to see the progression of different items throughout time, and it was fun learning about the history of a different country. There are definitely some similarities to how everything occurred in the past.
After the museum we went back out onto the Otago Peninsula to go and see the Albatross Colony. We didn't want to spend any money to actually go inside, but we were told that you could go park up there and see them flying around. The drive probably took us about 40 min, but it was really pretty because we got to drive along the coast. When we got to the parking lot, there were some GREAT views!
The water was really blue and pretty, and the shore line was just crazy. It was really relaxing watching the waves come in and crash on the rocks. Unfortunately, it wasn't windy enough for the birds to fly (because I guess they need wind to fly), so we didn't see any. However, I was still glad we drove out there and at least tried. Even though we didn't see any of them, we still didn't think it was worth it to pay to go inside.
We drove back along the coast and headed to hot yoga. I have never done hot yoga before, and I'm not even that big of a fan of regular yoga, but Shaina does it a lot at home, so I figured I'd try it out. Basically, it's regular yoga inside of a room that is 105 degrees Fahrenheit. I was sweating before I even started moving. No talking is allowed inside of the room. We started with some breathing exercises (typical of yoga) and then we did some standing positions. We weren't really smart and didn't drink much water before, so we were sweating out like all the water we had in our bodies. It is common for people to sit down and just breathe if you feel like you're going to pass out. Many people did throughout the class since it was so hot. After the standing poses we did some stuff sitting and lying down which I liked. We were in there for about 90 minutes total. Personally, I'm still not a huge fan of yoga, but it was definitely an experience to have that was pretty fun. Plus, it was the first time we got to do some exercising on the trip which was nice!
After yoga we went back to our hostile, ate dinner, and then made a fort...yes a fort...in mine and Shaina's bunk beds. Then we just watched a movie and went to sleep. It was a very busy couple days in Dunedin, so it was definitely nice to have a nice and relaxing night! Queenstown is the next location of our tour of the South!
Day 2:
On Tuesday, we spent a second day in Dunedin. We were able to sleep in instead of waking up at 530 like the day before, however we knew we had a busy day planned, so we didn't sleep in too late. We ate breakfast at our hostile and then headed to some shops in the Octagon.
Then after shopping a little bit we went to the Train Station which was an absolute beautiful building. We don't have that cool of architecture back home, so that's one of the reasons I loved this town. So many of the buildings had this historic look to them that was really pretty. The train station is a working station where people can purchase tickets to ride around the area.
Inside the station you could obviously buy tickets and things, but you can also go and look at a free art gallery which is pretty cool. You couldn't take pictures for obvious reasons, but it was cool since I've never been in a legit art gallery before to look at people's work. You can also go into some sort of sports hall of fame where they focus a lot on rugby. We didn't go there because it cost money and we didn't think it was worth it.
After the campus, we decided to go and walk to Otago University. It was a few blocks down and we didn't really know where it was, but we knew the general direction. New Zealand calls their high school "college" and their universities just "university" or "uni", so we weren't sure if we were at the right place when we found one of the schools. It seemed like it had more buildings than a regular high school would, but it didn't seem very college campus-y. We kept walking and eventually found what we were looking for. The college was really cool. It had really pretty gray-stoned buildings and plenty of huge trees.
We were told that the South is known for their cheese rolls, so we went on a trek to go and find some. Unfortunately we were told false directions and ended up walking all around, but eventually we found a bakery that had them! Essentially it was like a rolled up grilled cheese with like a chive and onion cream cheese on it, but we were hungry and they tasted fabulous. After this little snack we went back to the hostile to eat lunch and then headed out for more adventures.
Baldwin Street was next on our list. It is the WORLD's steepest street! I think they said it is at about a 34% grade or something like that.
It may not seem that steep in the picture, but it definitely is! Of course we had to walk up it. It was funny watching cars drive up it because they just gunned it at the bottom to get to the top. There wasn't really anything to do there, but it was your classic tourist attraction (plus it was free!).
Next we went to the Settlers Museum. It was a really cool museum because it started way back with the origins of people coming here and made its way through history. It was crazy huge. There were so many different interactive things people could do to learn all the different facts. One room I thought was cool was just a room full of pictures. You could sit down at a little desk that had a touch-screen monitor. Then you choose a wall and can click on any of the pictures and learn about the people in the pictures.
There were a bunch of rooms like this. There was always some video playing, some headset to put on and listen to, or some computer around to explore the different items. After looking through the history of the people and how the towns came to be, you could go through and look at progression of different household items and cars. There was a room that showed really old appliances and electronics, and then one that showed some older cars.
We only spent like an hour there, but you could honestly spend an entire day there reading about everything. We didn't really have the patience to sit and read everything, so we mostly just looked around. It was still really cool though to see the progression of different items throughout time, and it was fun learning about the history of a different country. There are definitely some similarities to how everything occurred in the past.
After the museum we went back out onto the Otago Peninsula to go and see the Albatross Colony. We didn't want to spend any money to actually go inside, but we were told that you could go park up there and see them flying around. The drive probably took us about 40 min, but it was really pretty because we got to drive along the coast. When we got to the parking lot, there were some GREAT views!
The water was really blue and pretty, and the shore line was just crazy. It was really relaxing watching the waves come in and crash on the rocks. Unfortunately, it wasn't windy enough for the birds to fly (because I guess they need wind to fly), so we didn't see any. However, I was still glad we drove out there and at least tried. Even though we didn't see any of them, we still didn't think it was worth it to pay to go inside.
We drove back along the coast and headed to hot yoga. I have never done hot yoga before, and I'm not even that big of a fan of regular yoga, but Shaina does it a lot at home, so I figured I'd try it out. Basically, it's regular yoga inside of a room that is 105 degrees Fahrenheit. I was sweating before I even started moving. No talking is allowed inside of the room. We started with some breathing exercises (typical of yoga) and then we did some standing positions. We weren't really smart and didn't drink much water before, so we were sweating out like all the water we had in our bodies. It is common for people to sit down and just breathe if you feel like you're going to pass out. Many people did throughout the class since it was so hot. After the standing poses we did some stuff sitting and lying down which I liked. We were in there for about 90 minutes total. Personally, I'm still not a huge fan of yoga, but it was definitely an experience to have that was pretty fun. Plus, it was the first time we got to do some exercising on the trip which was nice!
After yoga we went back to our hostile, ate dinner, and then made a fort...yes a fort...in mine and Shaina's bunk beds. Then we just watched a movie and went to sleep. It was a very busy couple days in Dunedin, so it was definitely nice to have a nice and relaxing night! Queenstown is the next location of our tour of the South!
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