Mulled Wine, Chocolate, Beautiful Scenery - All In A Day's Work In Queenstown

Posted by Emily

After Wanaka, it was on to Queenstown, which is apparently the adventure capital of the world. Not too much craziness for us though. It's really expensive! We arrived a few hours before the Winterfest Mardi Gras parade, so after resting up a bit, we headed out into the cold to check out the festivities. They started with a small parade featuring paper masks on sticks, people in colorful costumes on stilts and many children with paper lanterns. It was a far cry from the antics that take place during the real Mardi Gras parade! After this, it was a night of drinking mulled wine (to stay warm of course) and listening/dancing to various bands that were featured on the stage. Some of them were a little cheesy, but it was really fun. Dancing also helps to stay warm!

The next day we wandered around the town for a bit, checked out the beautiful lake at the center of town (see Nicki's blog for its name....) and took a gondola up to the top of the hill overlooking the city. Luckily, we had a beautiful clear day and could see the city, lake and surrounding mountains perfectly. Another feature at the top of the gondola is a luge course, and for $7, we couldn't pass it up. It involved sitting in plastic sled-like things on wheels with handlebars that acted as breaks when pulled back. It was a good time but there were too many curves and in order to stay in control, we couldn't go too fast. We also discovered an awesome chocolate shop that also served ice cream and hot chocolate in very unique flavors. I sampled the Mexican chili hot chocolate and the lavender hot chocolate. Both excellent. Who's seen the movie Chocolat? I've wanted to try chocolate and chili every since I saw that movie but had never actually seen it in a shop before

The next day we took a hike on the Queenstown Hill Walkway, which was beautiful but very icy at places. That made the hike a little less enjoyable. It was also a very cloudy day and so most of the view we could have had at the top of the view was cloaked in clouds. There was a kind of eerie looking clearing over the lake so at least we could see something. Then it was off to the airport in the afternoon for a flight back up to Auckland for our flights. Nicki just left for her flight back to the US and I will be leaving tomorrow for my flight to Tokyo. So! I better get off this computer and go entertain myself somewhere more interesting than this hostel.