This morning Gerard was King of the Kitchen and got the breakfast, its about time, Noeline and I have made him numerous cups of coffee and waited on him hand and foot.
Last night Noeline lost her earring and we all crawled around the floor looking for it both last night and this morning. We left Dunedin in the belief that we would never see the earring again.
We left Dunedin in the freezing cold and rain and an unbelievable gale. Noeline wanted to post some cards and when we stopped at the Post office she could not close the car door against the wind.
The trip today was absolutely beautiful and the scenery was amazing. We stopped for morning wee at Roxburgh, a quaint little town, then morning tea at Alexandra, which was quite a reasonable sized town – about the size of Horsham. Unbelievably Noeline found her earring in the car when we stopped at Alexandra, so a major catastrophe was avoided.
Just outside Alexandra we stopped at the Clyde dam where the Dunstan Lake has been formed from damming the Clutha River. It forms part of the hydroelectric scheme and has a very impressive dam wall and pretty scenery. Dunstan Lake runs along between the road and the mountain range, very like the lake at Lucerne in Switzerland. We travelled along the lake for 10-15 kms and marvelled at the serenity of the place and the reflections of the mountains in the lake. The water was so calm it was a mirror image and at times it was hard to see where the rocky edges finished and the reflection started. We took photos as we drove along, so I hope they have worked. The mountains along the lake are very bare and rocky and we drove through a number of gorges of bare grey rock.
We wound our way through the hills and valleys with rivers running along side the road. We stopped at Cromwell at this little market and shop area where they advertised a cidery and it turned out that alongside the shop where you could buy cider there was a shop that sold vinaigrettes, oils and alcoholic beverages and all sorts of gourmet sauces, chutneys and herbs etc. Of course we bought some vinaigrettes – they were delicious and we tried all sorts of schnapps, limoncello and cappuccino cream, which was a bit like Bailey’s. It was all very nice and tasty.
From there we went to Gibbston where we stopped at the cheese factory and had hot brie with caramelised onion on fresh crusty French stick. It was absolutely delicious. In case you haven’t worked it out already we are really just eating and drinking our way around New Zealand. There was a winery next door, but it was pretty expensive and they wanted to charge $5 for tastings. We decided they could keep their tastings and we left.
We arrived in Queenstown after our day of travelling through beautiful scenery surrounded by snow-capped mountains and paddocks of sheep with baby lambs. A lot of the sheep have had twins and triplets and they are so cute frolicking around the paddocks totally unaware of the cold, although some of them have found nice little hollows to lie in out of the wind. It is certainly nice to see such lovely green grass.
Once in Queenstown we drove into town to go to the teller machine and wandered into the mall. We found some bargains in the souvenir shop and then headed to our accommodation. Once again I have earned brownie points. This Hotel is very nice, not as good as Dunedin, but quite comfortable and it has a guest laundry – so guess what, we spent a couple of hours doing the laundry.
We went back into town and had a walk through the Botanical Gardens and along the Port. Queenstown on a Friday night is very, very busy with all the shops open and lots of people wandering around enjoying the fine evening and the many restaurants and bars. The Italian restaurant we wanted to go to was full, so we found another one and went there. The restaurant was called “Fatz Cat” and the walls were decorated with photos, drawings and other cat type things. Some people you just can’t take out! Gerard had his delicious meal delivered with a spoon in it. He got so animated telling us that he had just read on the wall that Dean Martin had eaten there that he hit the end of the spoon with his hand and food went flying across the room. There was pasta and tomato all over the floor.
There were so many people out and about it was so hard to find a car park too. We had a delicious meal and waddled out to the car to come home for an early night.
