On Wednesday I caught my bus from Christchurch to Dunedin. I met a nice couple while I was waiting for the bus who lived a little outside of Dunedin that had moved here from the US about 5 years ago. It was good to talk to them about a few of the fun things to do in Dunedin. The bus ride was about 5 ½ hours, but didn’t seem that long because I was taking in the sights most of the time, listening to music, and sleeping a little bit. We also had a really good bus driver. He said that he normally drove the bus that did big tours with commentary and stuff, so whenever we came to something important or interesting he would tell us a little bit about the things we were seeing. The drive was beautiful. Most of it was right along ocean. Some of the drive actually reminded me of the Palouse near Pullman, WA because of all the rolling hills.
I arrived at Stafford Gables YHA in Dunedin that evening where I stayed for two nights in a 5 bed female dorm. The first night, I was the last person to get there so I got the top bunk, which was a killer on my back to get up and down but luckily I was able to move to the single bed the next night. The hostel here is actually really nice. It’s a medium size hostel with about 60 beds in it or so. There is an internet lounge where I sat for a while that night and met some new people. A girl named May from Malaysia was really nice. We sat and talked about all of our adventures so far within the area. We decided to meet up in the morning and try to book a chocolate factory tour together in the morning.
On Thursday morning we got up and made breakfast before exploring the city. My favorite part of the city was the Historic Railway Station, which is the 2nd most photographed building in the Southern Hemisphere! (Can you guess what the first is?.... The Sydney Opera House! Wow what an opportunity to get to see both in one trip!) There were a lot of beautiful buildings all over the city and we took heaps of photos!
After our little excursion through the downtown area of Dunedin we headed to the Cadbury Chocolate Factory. It is the first Cadbury Chocolate Factory in the world. This week is actually their Chocolate Carnival week, so they had a variety of different activities going on, but these were all booked, so we just went on the normal tour. Before the tour started there was an area with different displays of Cadbury Candy from the past. The tour was pretty fun where we got to see a lot of different machinery and chocolate being made and got to try some of the liquid Dairy Milk chocolate. It was so good! At the end of the tour there was a huge chocolate waterfall too! They also had some old Cadbury milk trucks that we got to take pictures with.
After the Cadbury tour I had a little time to relax before my tour to the Larnach Castle. I thought it was going to be a tour bus that was going, but the tour guide pulled up to my hostel in a small car with one other lady. They were almost not going to do a tour that day because they had a big event at the Castle that morning but since two of us wanted to go, they made a small tour for us. It was really nice to just have two of us for a personal tour. The tour guide was really nice and took us around town to see a few different sights first and then stopped at some beautiful view points just so I could take pictures! He was very knowledgeable about the Castle as he told us history and stories as we drove through the hills to the Castle.
The Castle was beautiful from the outside and even more magnificent on the inside (but I couldn’t take pictures inside). It was really neat to see all the history and culture within the place. We even got to climb up on the roof and see the views and take pictures from there. It was amazing!
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