Thursday was a relatively relaxed day. Our plans to take a jet boat safari up the Dart River, visit the Walter Peak sheep station via the T.S.S. Earnslaw, and bungy from the Karawau Bridge (OK, the last one was never in our plans) went out the window as my forced sedentary lifestyle continued. I did get to enjoy the view of the Remarkables from our hotel room’s balcony,



but Queenstown is better enjoyed outside your hotel room.

A little before noon, we finally left the room. I was able to convince Mr. FB that a walk around Queenstown—punctuated with a few rest stops—would be good for me. Besides, I needed to pick up some pain reliever, and we needed to have lunch.

As we exited the hotel, we turned left and walked up Beach Street for a bit and then along the lakeshore. It was a beautiful day, and the Remarkables, the lake, and everything else looked better from here:



I stopped at the Unichem Pharmacy for ibuprofen (with codeine!) while Mr. FB took some more pictures and browsed souvenir shops. I joined him in browsing as we walked up The Mall. We took a detour through an alley to have lunch at Hell Pizza. We had both seen the name of this chain during our previous visit to NZ, and we thought it would be cool to try it. We ordered a medium Wrath with kalamata olives and a bowl of kumara chips. Kumara is a root vegetable that is native to NZ. It’s similar to a sweet potato, so kumara chips are much like sweet potato fries. They were a great starter. While we were enjoying them, the Wrath pizza arrived. The pizza had a thin crust, the right amounts of cheese and sauce, and was topped with venison pepperoni, chilli oil, tomatoes, olives, green pepper, and onions. It was a good combination, and just the right amount of food for a very late breakfast and lunch combo.

After lunch, we did a little more browsing before walking to the Skyline Gondola. Perhaps the walk up the hill to the gondola terminal was a little more strenuous than my doctor would have liked, but at least I didn’t try to walk to the top of Bob’s Peak! We bought our tickets and started to enter the queue among a tour group. They all seemed to be 60+, and all of the members we encountered were from the US. We shared a gondola with a gentleman from Arizona, and he told us that they had flown in from Auckland that morning. A tour of Queenstown and visit to Milford Sound were in their immediate plans.

I promised Mr. FB that I would sit for awhile once we got to the top, but we paused to admire the view first:



We got tea and Anzac biscuits at the café, grabbed a sofa, and looked out as we relaxed a bit.

The upper terminus of the gondola offers many attractions: the obligatory gift shop, a restaurant with a buffet, an authentic Kiwi Haka, and a luge. For the more adventurous/crazy, A.J. Hackett has a bungy platform, and there’s also paragliding:



We decided just to take pictures and buy a few postcards before heading back down to Queenstown. During our walk to The Mall, we saw a Cookie Time store. Cookie Time and its symbol “Cookie Muncher” are ubiquitous in NZ, but the cookies are sold pre-packaged at places like petrol stations. The store in Queenstown has been open for just three months, and it could be the first of quite a few across NZ and maybe even outside of the country. The stores sell freshly backed cookies with a class of milk or a mug of hot chocolate. They also sell pre-packaged cookies as well as Cookie Muncher merchandise. The cookies are much better freshly baked. There was no place to sit in the store, so we walked to the nearby Starbucks for tea so I could have my required rest break.

After a bit more browsing and an ATM stop, we headed back to the room for a two-hour break before dinner. We went back out around 6:30 p.m. and admired how beautiful the Remarkables looked at dusk:



We did yet more browsing and purchased a few gifts before finding a place to eat. We stopped at a Thai place on The Mall. The service was friendly and fast. Our Green Curry and Pad Thai arrived shortly after we ordered them, and we made short work of the food.

Our three-night stay in Queenstown had not exactly gone according to plan. There was so much more I had wanted to do here, but at least we have an excuse to come back. Then again, one does not really need an excuse to visit Queenstown.