In order to give ourselves as little rest as possible, we had scheduled a bunch of stuff in Dunedin the day after we arrived in Wanaka. On paper it was about a 4 hour drive, but through good old American aggressive driving and creative passing, we did it in 3:15. Even so we had booked a 9 am tour, which meant leaving at 5 am and waking up at 4:30. F. Along the way, we encountered the largest fruit sculpture in New Zealand. Sadly, we didn't stop this time, but we noted the existance of the town of Cromwell. It would come in handy later.
Luckily Megan was a rock star and drove the last hour or so when I was too tired to keep on going. She had to deal with a ridiculously precarious road meandering its way up these cliffs leading up to Lanarch Castle, New Zealand's only castle. Ever. We got started on the self guided tour with a video purportedly of the history of the castle. Instead it just talked about how the family that purchased it 30 years ago repaired it and lived there. The castle had been in disrepair for a long while after the original owners lost it. I was disappointed to see them gloss over the real history and mostly focus on what they did.
After we finished up with Lanarch Castle, we backtracked into the center of Dunedin, called the Octagon. Surprisingly enough, it is shaped like an octagon with a bunch of shops and eateries bookended by some beautiful churches. We wandered around before heading down south to look at the train station. It is a beautiful building that is still in use today. We started to notice there that every time we mispronounced Dunedin, all the locals would repeat it with the correct pronunciation (shown in the title).
We started heading back to the Octagon, but along the way Megan noticed CADBURY WORLD. They have a tour and gift shop set up so you can see the chocolate being made (and buy it). We of course headed in. Sadly, on weekends, the factory isn't running so you don't get to see the people at work. During the week, there is an extended tour which really shows everything. Instead we got to see a movie and go through the factory where they showed up the machines and explained how they make the various chocolates. They also have the largest chocolate waterfall in the world which might have been the best part of the tour.
We left the factory just in time for it to start pouring. After taking a short detour to Vodafone to get another usb 3g modem for New Zealand so I could keep up with my internet fix, we windowshopped our way back to the Octagon. We had a 6 pm tour of Speights brewery and we tried to get into an earlier tour, but the douchebag (from Australia - I don't want to give New Zealand a bad name) wouldn't let us into the tour. Since we had time to kill and it was still pouring we got into our car to head to Baldwin St, the steepest street in the world. 
It puts Lombard St to shame. It doesn't have any of that pansy "curves" or "switchbacks", just one street straight up. Clearly we had to drive up to the top and speed down, which Megan wasn't a huge fan of. After driving it, we decided to walk it as well. After little discussion we decided that driving it is a much better way of ascending. Once we were back at the bottom, Megan let me drive it one more time.
It was getting close to 6, so we drove back to Speights to get the tour. Even though we had the douchebag tour guide, it was still really awesome. They put a lot of work into having a good tour and it shows. We learned about the history of Speights beer and also the history of the site. They take you through all the different parts of the factory where they make beer. It even went through a hollowed out old cask. The best part of any is brewery tour though is that you get to taste beers at the end. We sampled 6 or so beers before the tour guide lied to us and told us another tour was coming through so he had to kick us out. We realized after we'd been duped that we were the last tour of the day.
After leaving the brewery, we decided we'd get food next door at the Speights restaurant. The food was pretty good but not exceptional. After getting food, we started driving back. We were a little under half full of gas so we were looking for gas stations leaving Dunedin, but we couldn't find any along the way so we just assumed we'd get gas on the road. After driving an hour or so and finally getting to a town that had a gas station, we realized that in New Zealand most gas stations close around 8 or 9. We must have gotten to this town right after they had closed. The bad part is that almost all of them also don't let you pay at the pump. As a result, we spent the next two hours searching for gas stations along the way. I had Megan get the laptop out and she looked up where towns were so that we knew about where we would have to call it quits so that we wouldn't run out of gas in the middle of no where. We got to a Mobil around 11 that claimed to have a 24 hr machine that took credit cards, but it was out of order.
We drove through a few semibig cities that had no gas stations open and we knew that Cromwell was our last chance. We had decided if we couldn't get gas we were going to have to find a hotel to sleep at that night. We had gotten directions to a gas station from google maps and we tried there, but it was closed as well. Megan noticed a hotel across the way and we pulled in there and she ran in to ask if there was a nearby gas station. Somehow it was the place to be on a Tuesday night with tons of people hanging out there. Luckily they pointed us to a BP that was open until midnight. We got there at 11:57! Woot to not spending the night in our car. After getting gas, we drove back home to Wanaka and passed out knowing that we had to leave the next morning at 4:30 am to get to the glacier in time for ice climbing.
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