Queenstown

The sun was shining again this morning so we wanted to do a walk along the lake. We ended up watching the Newcastle Chelsea football highlights first though as it was on the telly in the hostel. We had breakfast and a shower and then headed down to the lake where we parked the car. It was only a there and back walk that took us a couple of hours but the mountains were wonderfully clear on the other side of the lake. We stopped at one point and enjoyed some tea from our flask paired with an oat and raisin cookie (you can get a big back of them for $2 so of course we got them for emergencies). 

Back at the car we decided to head on to Queenstown as Wanaka was only small and we'd seen all of it now. It took us around an hour to get there and again the views along the way were phenomenal; we even stopped for lunch at one of the many view points. We weren't expecting much from Queenstown because our thoughts were it was just a town for people to do adrenaline sports in. Oh how we were wrong. It was lovely! Lots of little shops and pubs and beautiful views out over the clear blue lake to mountains. It was nicely busy, mainly with tourists obviously, and there seemed to be a lot more going on than anywhere else in New Zealand so far. After driving through the town we checked in at our hostel and also left the car there before walking back towards the lake. 

We sat by the lake for a while on a wall and people watched. As it was sunny, there were people sitting on the little pebble beach, lots of passers by and more sat outside pubs and cafes along the lake front, enjoying coffees, beers or ice creams. We also had a wander round town before walking to the gardens which sat on a little mini peninsula. We did a lovely walk through the gardens (the Victorians used these gardens to parade around) to the edge of the lake and then back along the water front. It was starting to get rather chilly by then as it was early evening so we had a think about what to do for tea. There was a very famous burger place in town that always had huge queues so we started to head towards there until we saw a sign for a Sunday roast. Seeing as it was Sunday we went in and sat out the back of this pub which happened to be right by the lake. We weren't the warmest but we wanted to make the most of the sunshine so ate our hot roast dinner outside. The plate consisted of roast pork (no crackling), roast potatoes, leeks, red cabbage, carrots, Yorkshire puddings and gravy (although not enough gravy). It was all pretty yummy but maybe that was because I haven't had a roast dinner in an awfully long time. 

After food we had to find a supermarket as we needed lunch stuff for tomorrow. It took us a little while to find the supermarket so by the time we got back to the hostel it was getting late. We made use of the free wifi and Matt introduced me to Flight of the Concords seeing as we were in New Zealand and all. They're quite funny.