Skip to main content

Last Full Day in Paradise

We had big plans for the day, but our rafting trip was cancelled.  Instead we drove into town for lunch and a bit of souvenir shopping.  Something I really like about New Zealand is all the outdoor dining.  I think almost every eatery we've been to from roadside cafe to brewery to fine dining has had both indoor and outdoor seating.  When it rains, people either come inside or get closer to the umbrella.  The outdoor wood furniture is made of local woods in rich red tones and is very heavy.  After doing a bit of shopping (a few of you are hard to buy for), we went to Atlas Beer Cafe on the recommendation of the girl at the bungy jumping gift shop.  You've gotta get the inside info from the locals (which she probably wasn't).  Shawn opted for lunch, while I had breakfast because I couldn't pass up a last chance for smoked salmon.

Seagull taking a break on the giant kiwi sculpture

Atlas

Pork belly sandwich with Chimichuri sauce and jalapenos

Poached eggs over smoked salmon, kumara fritters and spinach

After lunch we walked through the open air market to see the local crafts.  Lots of jade, bone and paua shell (abalone) jewelry.  As you might imagine, wool products are prolific too.  I found a woman who makes pendants from sand and microscopic rocks.  She collects the sand and rocks from a specific beach when the conditions are just right and then she sorts the grains and rocks into sizes and colors.  She arranges the sand and rocks in patterns in the pendants with tweezers then seals them in resin.  It was hard to choose one, but I ended up picking one that she had pulled back because it was imperfect as one of the stones had moved when she sealed it.



The largest selection of gelato that we have seen in NZ 

In the afternoon, we hung about on our balcony enjoying the cool breeze and the view of the lake.  Transitioning back to work will be rough.  For dinner we went back into town, but this time we walked.  There is a path from our hotel along the lake.  It was about a 40-minute walk, so maybe two miles.  There were some cool houses along the lake.  They views are so spectacular that most houses have a lot of glass.  Something we've noticed they don't have is screens.  We thought it was odd considering all the bugs.



Once again on the advice of  Miss Bungy, we went to Smith's Craft Beer House.  Miss Bungy has been much more reliable than Yelp.  They had 18 local brews on tap with the majority being Epic.  We tried a flight of six and settled on the Epic Armageddon IPA and Groundup Midnight Lightning.  Restaurant service is a bit different than we're used to.  In cafes and pubs you typically order and pay at the bar.  In nicer restaurants they will seat you and take your order, but you still pay at the bar; they don't bring your check to you.  Tap water is usually available in large chilled bottles.  You either grab it yourself or they bring it to your table.



Pulled pork sandwich, loaded fries, venison pot pie

Since it's near the end of  summer here, the days are still long and the sun doesn't set until after 8:30.  We strolled through the Queenstown Garden which included a Frisbee golf course, rose garden, English garden and forest.  Then it was back along the river to our villa.  Not a bad way to end our day.

Queenstown


Fern sculpture in Queenstown Garden 



Daily Ratings:
Atlas Beer Cafe - 4 Kiwis
Smith's Craft Beer House - 5 Kiwis
Open air market - 4 Kiwis
Villa Del Logo Hotel - 5 Kiwis

Last gelato flavor: Marscapone, fig and roasted almonds
Steps taken = 14,002




Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Thoughts on Retiring

Early this morning while lying awake in bed, I did some mental math and realized I will be retiring from my career in IT almost exactly 30 years from the day I started my first job out of college.  It is a bittersweet experience.  While I’m excited about the next chapter in my life and our big adventure moving to Idaho, I’m also sad to bring my IT career to a close and leave my work family.  I have spent 40+ hours per week for the last 30 years solving problems, writing code, implementing systems, learning new technologies, meeting with customers, counseling staff, reading email, and attending way too many meetings. To help me through this change, I started thinking about all the things I won’t miss, like those meetings.  People compliment me on my copious note-taking in meetings.  Here’s the truth, I started taking notes in boring meetings to keep from falling asleep and then it just became a habit.  I started with legal pads and saved the loose l...

Be Our Guest

We spent the majority of our day working on the guest room flooring.  An early morning trip into Coeur d’Alene (CDA from now on because it’s easier to type) for more flooring and assorted supplies at Home Depot.  You can’t go into town without a trip to Home Depot to buy and/or return stuff. Yesterday we pulled up all the carpet, pad and tack strip and filled the holes in the floor of the guest room.  This morning we rolled out contact adhesive around the perimeter of the room and closet.  Then we just started slapping down the vinyl planks.  The center of the room was done in no time, but cutting the planks for the ends, edges and doorways took a few hours.  It looks much better than the original gray indoor/outdoor that was there originally.  We will paint and install new base boards when we return in March. Empty with indoor/outdoor carpet Contact adhesive applied New flooring Today I noticed that I would walk from room to room ...

We Have Arrived in Idaho

On December 30, 2017, we closed on our new house in Idaho.  We sent 2 out of 3 PODs worth of our stuff to Idaho in the first week of January, and now we are spending a week in Idaho.  We had great plans of arriving on Saturday afternoon and having a few hours to unpack our bed and necessities before sundown.  Yeah, that didn’t happen.  Our flight from Sacramento to Spokane was delayed an hour and a half.  The sun was going down as we raced from the airport to Home Depot to get a couple lamps, an extension cord and a snow shovel before heading to our new house in Worley, Idaho. There was a tiny bit of light left when we drove up the driveway.  Our new neighbor, Kyle, stopped by and gave us the lowdown on how he had plowed our driveway for the delivery of our PODs.  Kyle was very nice and we truly appreciated his efforts.   Kyle is a busy guy this time of year as he has a trapline that needs to be tended to every 72 hours.  Unfortunately, ...