NZ- friday

i spent the night at camille’s sleep away, and kirsty and holly were hunkered down at camille’s family’s house. cam and i walked over to her friend’s house (stacey) for a morning cup of tea before holly and kirsty came to pick us up. one of the kids stacey looks after showed up. i was sizing him up and asking if school was on break. the kid looked about seven or eight to me. nope, school was on, the kid i was looking at was four! apparently he had a tall father, and perhaps i’ve gotten used to smaller looking korean kids. we had our tea and cam asked stacey to ask around about rugby matches. . . then our ride turned up and we were off.

it was still drizzly, so interior adventures were choice. first off to the otago museum. there were lots of natural history type exhibits. but the two things that i was more interested in were the world of wearable art museum and the butterfly sanctuary. from what i understand the world of wearable art is a production that happens in wellington and it’s a fashion show to the extreme. things that look like they belong in cirque shows or extremely stylized movies. .. gorgeous gorgeous clothes. they were big on not allowing photography, and while it would be nice as a reference, i doubt my pictures could’ve done the garments justice. all sorts of materials and all sorts of themes. afterward we hung out in the butterfly sanctuary. i guess i’ve never seen that many butterflies hanging out together. there seemed to be a lot of arial play. groups of them would chase each other around and do loop-de-loops. they seemed to be a lot more social that i had anticipated, but i usually only see one or two at a time. i did have one land on my head briefly. the impulse to wipe it off was difficult to overcome. lunch at the museum shop and then we were off.

after the otago museum it was off to the cadbury chocolate factory for their factory tour. for most of the tour we had to ditch our bags, cameras, and don white hair caps. our tour guide awarded us with chocolates as we listened and answered questions correctly. (i won a chocolate for coming from the furthest country in that group.) i did learn that the dunedin factory had developed a way to make white chocolate from actual cacao. . . though i forgot to buy some. i’ll have to hunt those down later. at the conclusion of the tour we were taken into an emptied milk silo (which is right next to the new functional silo). this empty silo has one function. everyone stands in a semi-circle and watches one ton of liquid chocolate fall from the top into a large bowl below us. . . and they take a picture of us watching. it was loud and it smelled amazing. i had just seen a small chocolate falls in jeju. . . but this kinda kicked it’s ass.

next, another tour. . .this time the speights beer brewery tour- pride of the south. they had a lovely ‘beer through time’ kind of set up to walk through before we got to the brewing areas. there was something about the scandinavian toast, ‘skol’ coming from the fact that after a victory, vikings would use the lopped off skull to drink their beer. and well, many many other facts that i wasn’t going to keep in my head. i did like hearing that, still in effect, workers at the brewery are allowed to drink the beer while they work. if, at any point, they are incapable of doing their work due to drunkenness, they are immediately fired. pretty sound thinking. i think he said that there had only ever been a few people fired. the tour ended in a small pub where we had a half hour to try a handful of the beers. if you know me, you know i’m not a beer drinker. . . but i do like trying things, so i was up to the taps quickly and several times to try the flavors. the tour guide caught me and had me stop to demonstrate the camera feature of the bar. it would take a picture of you as you poured your beer. as it turns out, i’m quite cute with a bunch of beers in front of me. i always though beer goggles were supposed to work while looking at other people.

we had a fantastic dinner at the speights ale house (all part of the tour package- highly recommended). i know my dinner was good, but i can’t remember it, other than my roasted pumpkin soup starter. i couldn’t finish it and the servers kept trying to take it away, and i kept slapping at their wrists. finally i got them to agree to let me take it out doggy bag style. it was a perfect midnight match to some olympic watching later.

while driving around we looked and drove past the house from scarfies (movie).

still not finished though. we had a little time before our movie, so we made a stop at the dunedin train station. it’s a gorgeous building day or night. the interior was just as detailed and interesting. it lent itself well to a photo shoot.

last bit of the day was a movie. it was something the gals and i had been excited for since we found out it would be in NZ when i was visiting. yep, we wanted to see magic mike. we headed over to the octagon to get our tickets. (course then we walked to a nearby dairy to get some snacks- my choice of snack. . . meat pie.) first thing that hit me at the movie theatre was the seats. the seats were like lazy boy chairs. . . ok, maybe not that big, but seriously bigger than i am accustomed. . . and instead of little cup holders, there are small tables at the end of each arm on which to perch your snack and drink. disappointingly, that was the best part of the movie experience. i didn’t expect much from magic mike, but i also didn’t expect it to be so dreadfully boring. it was a chore to enjoy bits of it here and there.

can’t win ‘em all.