June 13, 2017 - Dunedin: Baldwin Street, Cadbury (!!!), Chinese Gardens

This is how we finished last night!

The day starts really early!  I’m hiding under the covers so the computer light doesn’t wake Marilyn;  but she wakes up ghastly early anyway!  We have lots of time for writing and checking mail and all that bookkeeping stuff.  We have hard-boiled eggs and get our act out the door, just in time to get to the car before our meter expires at 9:00 a.m.

First stop, Baldwin Street, the steepest street in the world!  (I wonder of San Francisco knows about this?)  We find a place to park, zip up our coats and try to figure out how to photograph this hideously steep incline!  There are people – ot many! – who are actually walking up it and we spot a group of three in red jackets coming down.  They are Lions fans, of course an when they get to us we chat about rugby.  They tell us they are the half-time show – but they’re not!  They tell us that the British and Irish Lions are actually made up of the best players from England, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales and every four years they play a series with another country.  There are three countries in the rotation, so they play New Zealand’s All Blacks once every twelve years, with ten games in the series.  The other countries are South Africa and Australia.  They tell us some of the rules and tell us that almost nothing stops play, certainly not just having a player on the ground, because if he had the ball the others all pile on top of him and try to get the ball any way possible.

Our buddies are in red.  We ran into them again at Cadbury's!

 

I made a friend!

 We walk part way up the street, searching for a way to show the incline!  We see a videographer schlep all the way to the top with his equipment, and when he set up, two gentlemen walk up, apparently having an interview.  They are in red and must be Lions, also.

Note – Wikipedia says that Guinness is wrong and the steepest is actually Canton Avenue in Pittsburg with a 37% gradient! Baldwin is “only” 35%

The weather is a little drippy;  but not awful.  We stop into the “Quarry Store” which is a little convenience store, looking for instant coffee.  Instead we find Kinder Eggs!!  Yay!  A travel tradition!

Back into town for the Cadbury factory!  When you enter the smell is overwhelming.  Our guide, Louis, says it smells like love!!  When Louis checks our tickets, he gives us each a plastic bag with a few pieces of chocolate in it.  He promises that there will be more!

We aren’t allowed to bring anything into the facility, so he opens Locker 11 and stashes our purses, backpacks, phones and cameras.  The rules also state that you can’t wear stilettos, go barefoot, or chew gum!  Basically, nothing that can contaminate the chocolate, even though we won’t be going into the factory itself!

Louis tells us all about the process, from harvesting the cacao beans, drying them out, winnowing out the shells and leaving the nibs, squeezing out the cocoa butter and leaving the cocoa powder, making “crumb” (which we get to taste!!) by mixing the powder with from New Zealand milk and sugar, and mixing this with the cocoa butter to make Cadbury chocolate.  Some of this process is done in Singapore before being sent to New Zealand.

Our next stop is the sensory room.  This is the bestest! There are dispenser for white chocolate, milk chocolate, and dark chocolate, and half a dozen different toppings including coconut, pretzels, candy-coated popcorn, hokey-pokey, and popping candy!  Of course you don’t have to have toppings!  Everyone gets a little plastic cup and a spoon and you can eat as much as you like!  Louis says the most he’s seen anyone eat is six cups.  Two people have done it.  One was a very tall man who was sickish afterwards;  the other was a girl about four feet tall and she was just fine!  I get through two and I’m done!  It is so rich!!

In this room we also get to watch a demonstration of tempering, in which the chocolate is cooled down to 26 degrees ( C ), then mixed with warmer chocolate to get the whole mixture down to 32 degrees ( C ).  This produces the shiny appearance we expect. 

The next room has a spinner, which is a large, stainless-steel sphere that spins (imagine that!) the chocolate into little spheres that are then coated with flavorings.  The last step is done by hand!!

Next we go outside and prepare to enter the large purple silo that holds 2500 liters of milk chocolate!  We climb half way up and emerge to see the sights of the city, including the old railway station, said to be the most-photographed structure in the country!  Back inside we all say, very loudly and in unison, “We want chocolate” and an entire ton of chocolate comes cascading down before our eyes!  Amazing!  We had to cling to the outside of the stairs since some of that chocolate might splash on the steps and make them slippery!  Louis is careful to tell us that this chocolate is only for fun and isn’t make into edible products!

Back down we are nearing the end of our tour.  We’ve gotten chocolates at nearly every stop and now we’re going to exit through the gift shop, in case we need more!!  I ask if the purchase by Kraft has had an impact and he says that it is the reason this plant will be closing next year.  The operation will be moving to Australia, although there is petition and pledge drive to try and keep it in New Zealand.  They will keep the oldest building and continue tours and making some of the iconic candies.

These two are original vehicles, one from 1910 and the other 1937

So many wonderful old buildings!

 We walk back to the car and drive down to the Chinese Garden.  It is only one of three such gardens outside of China and is called a Scholar’s Garden.  You can borrow an audio player with eleven guided stops on it.  The narrator explains the significance of such things as the zig-zag bridge which keeps evil spirits from crossing the bridge and the “mountain” which duplicates natural features in miniature.  The pond occupies the largest area and the rest of the garden encircles it.  The water is green to simulate jade and also to disguise the shallow depth.  May of the trees have cut fruit sections stuck on them to feed the birds, including the Silver Eye.  There are not many flowering plants because the color distracts from the scholar’s contemplations.  And most of the plants and trees are feminine, with soft contours and draping limbs.  The rocks are all from China and are a limestone that is favored for gardens because of it’s unusual shapes which encourage the imagination.  There are also stalagmites in the courtyard, which look like wood and are from a particular cave in China.

 

Oh, yes, and there is a gift shop and also a second-floor room in which you can play with Chinese puzzles and try on happi coats and robes.  And there’s a tea shop!

The girls in the gift shop say we can leave our car in their parking lot and walk to the Train Station. I suppose in the summer when the lot is full that wouldn’t be an option! 

It’s a short walk and when we get there is it trying to sprinkle again, so we take some photos and go inside.  There is a café where we get “veg soup” and bread with peppermint tea or hot chocolate.  The soup is filled with veggies and warm and wonderful.  By the time we’ve finished eating and reading the local paper the rain has quit, so we can take a few more photos.  Upstairs is the only national sports museum in New Zealand.

Guess which team they support!

Can you tell that the bike rack spells "CYCLE"?

We walk back to the Chinese Gardens to retrieve our car and drive home to the Wains.  We are lucky enough to find a four-hour parking place and feed it enough dollar coins to last us until 10:00 a.m.!

The young man at reception suggests that we can get a salad at Zucchini Brothers, two doors down, and rather than going upstairs and having to venture out again later, we walk down now and order two Greek salads and some rosemary bread to go.  We scoop up our dinner and return to our room to download photos, write whatever (blog or Facebook post), straighten out our accounts (we like to be even at the end of the day) and tomorrow.  Too bad we don’t have any more wine!

Zucchini Brothers' fire

Here are a couple of shots from yesterday.  We do the best we can to keep up with each other's photos!