Dunedin, NZOct 20, 2005
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photo captions later
Photo captions not efficient with this software. Can get more photos up for now by not using. Sorry.
Dunedin - 10/20/05
Sleep in til 7 am this morning. But, No Worry Mate, Our 9:30 am bus for the Cadbury Chocolate Factory tour was late.
Cadbury does not export to the US. Like someone had said there was no Easter Bunny. Hershey's makes our beloved Cadbury eggs under license. Locally Cadbury sells 41 million eggs to the 4.1 million New Zealanders each year. Six months to make and eaten in a week! No camera's were allowed inside the factory. Charade of safety to protect their product, but really lawyer driven. No jewelry (due to potential for glass contamination) but eyeglasses? No Worry Mate.
After our sugar high our schedule was a visit to Larch Castle (a Rockafeller type 50 room on top of an old volcano overlooking the city). Not a good day though. Rain and low clouds which quickly enveloped the castle just after our arrival. We didn't seen any of the spectacular views. Can't complain though. It's our first weather wash-out of the trip. Our visit was pretty rushed as we had to catch a train for the afternoon's activities. Lunch was short, or none, but we had been fueled by chocolate earlier.
Our afternoon tour was the Taieri Gorge Railway scenic tour. A two hour out and back ride. The weather broke to afford good views. A scenic rail trip through a gorge, but no Skagway! The route was difficult to construct due to the type rock - somewhat like shale and unstable. Couldn't use blasting, so everything was pick & shovel, horse and wagon.
The train returned about 6:30 pm and we had scheduled an ad hoc group dinner on return so there was no time to see the most scenic building in Dunedin - the old Railway Station, which has been restored. Dinner was a bad idea. The restaurant offered a very rich set of options, and was overwhelmed by the number of choices selected. Of 8 people at our table, we ordered 6 different meals. Scale that to 42 people the kitchen was hammered to a near crawl. They had to prepare each table's meals and serve them, then move to the next. Food quality was generally excellent, but greatly diminished by slow service. Large groups have to either do buffets, or limit selection to a couple of prepared meal sets.
