Day 160 Sunday 14th February 2010

Johno says

Happy Birthday to me!! Yes, I may have made it to a ripe old age but today we are off to the student city of Dunedin (meaning Edinburgh of the South) which was founded by Scottish settlers with affluence gained from the nearby gold rush helping settlers to construct buildings reminiscent of their homeland so there is a heavy Scottish influence with road names such as George and Princes Street and even home to New Zealands only castle and jeeees, it is cold here like Scotland too. The student city is also known as the Beer capital of New Zealand with a Speights brewery in town (New Zealands most popular beer) which made it a superb venue for my birthday drink! So, by 2pm we were booked on a tour of the brewery with quite an entertaining Scottish guy with a taste of their six different beers produced at this brewery at the end of the tour. I received the first beer poured by Stace as it was my birthday!! Afterwards, Stace, Adrian and I made it to a nearby supermarket and set ourselves up with some wine and crate of beers to last us into the evening. As a special treat Stace and I bloated ourselves out at a nearby Indian Restaurant for a birthday curry in the early evening which made the hostel's homely TV lounge feel even more comfortable on our return with the crate of beers and blankets from our room.

Day 161 Monday 15th February 2010

Stacey says

Slept in today, with no early morning alarm. However we have had some rooms recently with girls who are obsessed with packing their bags. This morning the girl in our 3 bed dorm, sat there from 8am for a whole hour rummaging through her bag, packing, unpacking, zipping, bag rustling, in and out of the room like a yo-yo, I wouldn't mind but she was in bed early the previous night, she had an empty room to make as much noise as she liked!! Grr. It needed a rant! To make it all better, we were headed to the Cadburys chocolate factory today for midday. We got our hair nets, and our plastic bag with a chocolate, which we had to hold to put the rest of the chocolate we collect on the way round!! yum yum. I was surrounded by massive tanks and pipes full of chocolate, it was an interesting tour and we learned that cocoa butter used in the chocolate melts at 35degrees (just below body temperature) which is why it melts in your mouth. And they use Palm oil instead of cocoa butter in chocolate for the hot countries, like Oz, to raise the melting point, which is what makes the chocolate bars not taste so nice. We finished up with watching 20 tonnes of chocolate falling through buckets like a waterfall, before eating some melted chocolate. It is pretty cold in Dunedin, they say its because they get the wind blowing from the Antarctic. So we wrapped ourselves in some blankets and watched some movies, and played some board games in the T.V room, it's a nice homely hostel, making it nice and comfy to lounge in.

Day 162 Tuesday 16th February 2010
Johno says
Today we were set to have a look around Dunedin. So, in the morning we had a walk around to the Dunedin Railway Station which happens to be the most photographed building in New Zealand and after a few photo's for the album we headed back into the city centre for some further site seeing. The sun actually made an appearance for the first time in a few days so we celebrated the fact with an early afternoon shandy in the sun at the Octogan, which is right in the centre of town and is where all the bars and restaurants are based.