Otago Living: Baldwin Street and Speight's Brewery Tour

Dunedin is a vibrant, lively city, and is home to many interesting sites. Among these are Baldwin Street, the world's steepest street, and Speight's Brewery, a local brewery that offers tours and tastings of its famous beer. I visited both of these sites last week, and can now say that I've seen two of Dunedin's most popular attractions.

Last Friday was a warm, sunny day, and Sammy and I decided to enjoy the weather and walk to Baldwin Street. Most people had been within the first week or so of arriving, but Sam and I somehow missed all of these trips. So it was about time that we finally made it to this Guinness World Record site! Unsurprisingly, it is an incredibly steep street! We walked up it, working up quite a sweat in the process, and took the touristy pictures required when you visit a world-famous site.

this certainly would be difficult to drive up in my manual car!

[Note how nice it was on Friday. It was warm, and I hung out outside in shorts and a t-shirt that afternoon. Yesterday we had hail storms all day. Dunedin weather is confusing.]

Saturday night, I went on the Speight's Brewery Tour with my friends Emma, Xavier, Tucker, Marvin, and Alina. Our tour guide was the great-grandson of one of the three original founders of the brewery, and was very knowledgeable about its history and current place in New Zealand culture. Speight's Gold Medal Ale, which is brewed on site in the Dunedin brewery (among other places in New Zealand), is a favorite among Otago students at the local bars. The tour began with a brief history of beer (beginning with the Egyptians), then moved on to explaining the ingredients and how they are obtained, and finally onto the actual brewing process. We ended in the brewery bar, where we got to taste 6 different types of Speight's beer (though one of them was actually cider). Except for the dark beer, which is brewed with espresso flavor, I liked all of the samples.