Q’Town Friday 1/25/08

This is our lazy day. We have no activities planned and we have nowhere to go. We get our once a week cooked breakfast and Alex throws some puff pastry sheets into a muffin tin with the tops extending up and over the outside like a tulip, drops an egg into the middle and bakes it. When the egg is done he tops it with a tomato and a few bacon slices and drizzles hollandaise and pesto around the outside. Very tasty and there is plenty of fruit, cheese, cereal and yogurt to go around.

Mary heads into town to poke around in some shops looking for Grandson’s birthday present and John finds a couch to catch up on internet stuff. We head out late morning to Glenorchy which is 25 miles up the road, exactly at the other end of Lake Wakatipu from Queenstown. There is nothing further that we can say to describe the drive but it continues to be drop-dead, eye popping, jaw dropping spectacular. Our only traffic jam came when we rounded a bend and drove straight into a flock of oncoming sheep. We had to park in the middle of the road while they strolled by on both sides. We walk around town and buy a couple possum souvenirs from a local tanner and head for lunch at the Hotel. Mary grabs a pumpkin soup with garlic bread and John finally has a NZ pie (mince and cheese with mashed tatties and peas). We take the Glenorchy walk along the lake for about a half hour, and John can begin to bend his legs after the glacier thing. The local abbreviation for Glenorchy is GY and the clothing store in town is DKGY—get it?

When we get back to Queenstown we do a polka around several blocks to get to a liquor store, gas station and grocery store to stock up for an all day trip tomorrow to Milford Sound. We have an early wake-up and the folks at the hotel are leaving breakfast in the room so we will be back in the saddle again after our day off. Mary’s turn on the computer and John’s turn for a nap.
We head into town in the evening for a bit more shopping and get a table at Luciano’s which is, yes, an Italian with a gangster theme. We order a basket of garlic bread, two salads and one garlic chicken with sweet potato mashed to split and it turns out to be the perfect amount. Main courses in NZ are usually between 25 and 35 NZ dollars and to get an idea of how that compares to home we usually multiply by 0.6. The NZ dollar is about ¾ of ours (changing daily) and tax and perhaps tip is included in the price. ($NZ30 would be an $18 menu item at home.) There is much discussion of tipping here with some despising the concept and others think a little something for the effort is OK. In cafes and pubs where you order and pay at the bar with the food delivered later we have generally not been tipping, while in restaurants with table service we will leave about 10%. At no time have we had a tip refused and many of the restaurants now have the tip line on the bill.

We have heard many good and bad things about Q'Town, the bad usually including the term tourist trap. Coming from a late career in the tourism industry, however, we think the town is just about right. The population is 13,000 (about the size of Brainerd), and is intirely included on a hillside surrounding the end of the lake. There is the aforementioned casino, tons of shops and restaurants, a big chairlift gondola thing that goes up the mountain, parasailing over the city and great walking areas around the lake. In other words, plenty of things for people to see and do while also enjoying the natural attractions outside the city. It is what it should be.

After dinner we took a stroll along the waterfront with the sun setting down lake and reflecting off the mountains behind the city with a neat border of pine trees in front. Mary thought it was the most dramatic visual she had ever seen and us with no camera. No casino tonight. Just back to the hotel and hustle to bed for a 4:30 rise and shine. We’ll see how Mary feels about that view.

Today’s Local Headline: Debt Burden Heading For Crunch Time The Southland Times