The Great Luge Mistake

On Saturday Jeff was back to work, and I got to sleep in a little bit!  I eventually picked up Nancy, Tom, and Laura to take them to the Remarkable's Saturday Market.  It is kind of like the Nelson market, but much smaller.  There Tom was able to try a sausage roll, and Laura and I picked up some yummy candles.  Laura and Nancy picked up some local spices, and Nancy got a bunch of Jams/Chutneys for back home.  We continued into town to visit the market on the Wharf that is mostly arts and crafts.  Laura and I picked up a knitted hat, and  after spending the entire week looking for the perfect wool scarf, I was INSPIRED.  Nancy took us to the yarn store to buy some nice possum and merino wool for a friend of hers and it struck me!! "Why don't I just knit my own scarf?!"  I was on a mission from then on to buy some tools, and knit me my very own wool scarf... Jeff's family ended up buying me beautiful wool and knitting needles, and I am slowly, but surely making myself a scarf, and then work on some scarves for others (depending on the quality of my own).

After a beautiful morning of shopping, we decided to try the Botswana Butchery's $15 lunches.  Aesthetically this place was amazing, and its menu was fabulous.  It specializes in steaks mostly, but has an impressive champagne list, and a great drink selection.  We stuck with the $15 specials, but every single thing the four of us got was AMAZING, most notably my steak sandwhich.  It had a perfectly cooked piece of steak on top of delicious bread with horseradish sauce and red onion jam (red onions reduced with sugar?).  It was the best food i've had in Queenstown and the best deal, with huge portions, and Jeff and I went back again 3 days later! 

After a hearty lunch, the four of us decided we should do a hike, so I suggested "hiking up to the gondola, and luging back down".  Everyone agreed it would be a great view and we would save the $25 it cost to ride the gondola up, and we could just luge down!  The walk was significantly harder than the QT Hill hike (and we thought it was the same height as QT hill, but its really about 200 meters lower?!) Once we got to the top we quickly realized that it was probably the stupidest thought in the world that it would be possible to luge down the 400 meters we just climbed.  The luge actually goes up an additional ski lift and you luge down only a small portion of the mountain.  It was embarrassing for me, but when we were at the bottom, no one else seemed to think it was implausible.  Needless to say we did not want to talk back down so we spent $14 each to go down the gondola, and no one even checked our tickets (as i had been told before, but we were too afraid to try to sneak down)!

Once Jeff got off of work we decided we would do a nice dinner, and chose Luciano's Italian restaurant.  It had an American Ganster theme and feel, with great food.  The ribeye was notably the best, but my potato gnocchi had an incredible texture and fresh taste.  The pizzas were also very tasty, especially the one with the pumpkin topping.  Afterwards, the ladies went back to the hotel, and we took Tom to Dux de Lux, the only microbrewery in Queenstown, with really good beers, and my favorite, the "Ginger Tom".  I am obsessed with all things ginger now.  

Luckily we didn't wait to save outdoor activities until the last day because Sunday was miserable outside.  I met the girls in town for some last minute shopping, while Tom had decided to climb the Ben Lomond.  We were worried because the summit is a little under a mile in altitude and the rain was pouring down.  The family still hadn't tried Fergburger yet so we stopped there and picked up three sandwiches/burgers to take back to the room and split.  While we the girls were all enjoying a delicious bite to eat, we hear Tom fiddling at the door, unable to use the key because he was so wet/cold/exhausted from his hike!  It was very impressive that he did it in that weather, and when he reached the summit, he said he wasn't able to see anything at all!!  What a shame!

I took the water taxi to work (yes i get to take a boat to work!!) so the Stortz's could have the car for the night and come visit me at Stacks.  They had a yummy dinner and waited to drive me home from work!  They surprised me with a New Zealand greenstone pandora bead!!  It was the one I really really really wanted!!  And we learned on our Milford Sound trip that it is good luck to GIVE greenstone, so they should be lucky for quite a bit of time!!  After dinner, it was already 11:30 so we took the girls back to the room, and took Tom out for the last hoorah.  We drank a bunch, and played a bunch of pool, and got the courage to test our hand at the casino.  We put up $100 for roulette and we were playing pretty well, up a bit throughout the game, and never really down.  We were finally up about $65 and had been playing for 30 minutes or so, so we decided to cash out, BUT we had been playing 4 all night and it hadn't hit so tom said "put it all on 4!!" we all laughed and I decided to put $5 on the four corners of 1,2,4, and 5. and IT HIT 4!! so yes I should have just put it on 4 and we would have won about $200, but we did win $40, so we went back to the hotel up $100 and super amazed by the forces of the casino gods, but we slept on the hotel room floor, so the casino gods must not be too generous.

We woke up, on the floor, early the next morning and had the fabulous breakfast at the hotel and took the family to the airport and bid them adieu!  It was sad to see them go, but it reminded us of why we must return home in September!!  

Cheers!!