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!! 

Queenstown - "The Adventure Capital of the World"

So apparently time runs a little faster in Queenstown... We have already been here for 2 weeks!  And I have not blogged once! It's way too easy to keep busy here, and I'm worried that I might blink and September will be here, or maybe things will start to slow down now that we are settling in, but I wouldn't count on it.  It is difficult to go into great detail about the past 10 days, so, again, I am going to try to highlight some of the more interesting moments using bullets (sorry).

In somewhat of a chronological order

• Jeff and I went out for our first Fergburger (The "best burger in New Zealand").  I think its a law that everyone that comes to Queenstown must try one because there is almost always a line outside, and people wait up to an hour for this burger. (It is open from 8:30am-5am).  It was delicious, but because of the sauces, the meat itself was not much more than any other american burger.  It probably is the best burger in New Zealand though.  While we were there we saw Gabriel, a boy we met on the Heaphy track.  He and his other French friend invited us to Cowboys for a beer (A bar Steve and Laurie had suggested to us on our way to Nelson from the Heaphy).  Cowboys is a really awesome bar with pool, shuffle board, and a mechanical bull.  We let some older man play pool with us so he bought everyone a liter of beer and I got to watch all of the guys attempt the bull ride.  It was a great night that started off with an impromptu trip to Fergburger.
• When something is going on in Queenstown (as there usually is on the weekends) everyone goes, so we thought we'd try our hand at properly attending the National Rugby 7s Tournament.  It is all of New Zealand's regions playing against eachother in a 2 day tournament, but it is a 7 on 7 game and is shorter in duration. We went with Dan, and you pay $10 to enter and because it is early afternoon you have no intention of drinking until you realize that is basically why everyone is there.  Dan and Jeff split a 6 pack of cans for $20.  Sadly, that isn't too outrageous for Queenstown.  
• I started my job at the Pub and I love it alot.  All of the people there are so nice and friendly, and they are from all over the world so they give some great insight and ask some funny questions about the US.  They come from the UK, Canada, South America, South Africa, NZ, and the US.  We went out with all of them and some of the other hotel people, and Jeff got along with all of the guys great, and from what I remember (or have been told) Ashley, Fran, and I spent a lot of the night dancing, telling boys they can't dance with us, and yelling I love you.  It was really fun, and apparently quite funny to watch.
• Jeff got a full-time job at Hertz rental cars working as a customer service agent or something?  Today is his 3rd day he seems to really enjoy it, and he will get to learn how to drive manual, well other than his motorcycle.  He teases me because he makes more money than I do, but I think I win after tips.  Either way we both have really perfect jobs that will let us enjoy Queenstown, its activities, and save for travelling once we leave New Zealand.
• Jeff's mom, sister Laura, and brother Tom are thinking of visiting in April/May which is super exciting, and I hope my mom will get a chance to come out too.
• We have a hotel co-ed basketball team, so there has to be 2 girls and 3 guys on the court at all times or you have to play a man down. So I heard this mentioned and wanted to go so that Jeff could play, and they said it was fine if he played as long as I played.  Jeff missed most of the first game because he was working, but when I got there I found out there was only one other girl there for our team so we had to play the entire 40 minutes!  I made one basket and we lost by one shot the first game.  There wasn't enough people to make up 2 full teams next game so they asked us to fill in so Jeff got to play, and I ended up playing a whole entire other game.  We got killed that game, probably because I took it easy :).  The second game had some aggressive boys so I backed off a bit because I have a tendency to get hurt in basketball.  I was fortunate enough to just be super super super sore for the next 2 days, and I will be there next week, and was even invited to play net ball on Wed nights (mostly because they need girls, and I have no idea how to play).  Jeff didn't like it as much as I did though, which I assumed he wouldn't when I knew there would be 4 girls on the court and most of the people hadn't played basketball before. There wasn't a strong defense or much strategy and he wasn't getting much playing time because there were so many guys, so it wasn't ideal for him, but I think there are more serious leagues coming up for him to join. 

That's about it for now, and I need to get ready for work, but Jeff suggested we start a little chart with the differences/similarities between a city like Philly and Queenstown to paint a better picture of the city, and speaking of pictures I will get some up here soon!

Love and miss everyone so much!!

Cheers!