Beer Tasting in Dunedin
On arrival to Dunedin we checked in to our first holiday park as we needed to fill up on water, recharge the batteries (campervan batteries, laptop, iPhones, etc), and the most delightful job of all: empty the portable toilet. This was my privilege.
Dunedin is said to have a strong Scottish heritage but other than the borrowed Scottish street and park names I couldn't see it. Dunedin was a nice enough city but not quite what I had expected from the images conjured by the guidebooks. We had a brief stroll around the city to soak up the atmosphere. I was pleasantly surprised to see a small British style pub/brasserie with a sign outside saying "Guiness served here". I have seen similar signs throughout travels but initial excitement is replaced with disappointment when I learn they only have bottled Guiness, this time they actually had Guiness on draft. Well I couldn't resist and thoroughly enjoyed my pint, despite it being ludicrously expensive!
If you have been following this blog you will have noticed that we have done a fair bit of wine tasting. So when there was an opportunity for beer tasting, I was not going to pass up on it. We had an informative tour of the original Speights brewery, but the highlight was the beer tasting at the end of the tour. There were six beers to taste, we had about 30 minutes and we could have as many glasses as we liked. Awesome! I'm not embarrassed to say I got stuck in, it was brilliant fun. We topped the evening off with a delightful meal in the Speights restaurant next door and I had my first taste of authentic New Zealand lamb… yummy!
We had planned to spend a few days in Dunedin but the following day the weather really deteriorated, very overcast with a very British style light but persistent rain. We explored the Otago Peninsula, famous for it's wildlife and Albatross colony, but visibility was so bad we decided to cut short our visit and head for the west coast and Te Anau.
