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| "The Remarkables", the mountain range our hotel faces |
I got to sleep in till nearly 7:00. That's a full 8 hours of sleep. But it was on a twin bed. I sleep on my side with my arm laying out beside me, so my wrist was hanging in thin air and was aching by morning.
I worked on the blog some more and got day 6 written, then started adding photos to day 2. I already had some comments about day 1 which encourages me to keep going.
We were going to church at 10:00 so I just toasted a bagel and slathered it with cream cheese to tide me over to lunch and kept working. I had a lot of 360 photos and videos to process, then several videos to upload to YouTube. By the time we had to go to church I was only about 1/3 of the way through day 2's photos.
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Driveway down to church |
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| Church in a converted Home |
Church was only 6 minutes away. It's held in a small house down a narrow driveway, so we parked on the street and walked down. There were only a few people when we arrived. We walked down and introduced ourselves to the missionaries. We were chatting when the Mormon miracle occurred, that's when over 100 people arrive in the last 5 minutes.
We got seats on the side of the chapel behind a young family. There is only this one branch in Queens town and the branch president was away. The young family in front of us turned out to be the wife and children of the branch president and his wife spoke about how they got there and some of their stories.
Next, a senior missionary spoke about how they are trying to setup a trip to the Temple in Wellington and about their work int he area. The Elder also told us that the church had bought the house uphill from the branch and was planning to build a phase 1 chapel on the sight. At one point I had to exit for a minute to clear my throat rather than breaking into a coughing fit. As I returned, I put my phone in burst mode and snapped one series of pictures. Not strictly good etiquette to take pictures during church but I was trying to catch the gorgeous view out the back window. It was a good meeting with lots of visitors and some good stories.
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| Church meeting |
We left right after and headed into Queenstown to find some brunch. I've been struggling a bit on this trip because I keep over-eating and feeling full all the time. We started looking for something light but wound up eating at an Indian place named Bombay Palace, not light food. I got Saag Lamb which is cooked spinach with seasoned lamb. I also got some naan bread and by the end you could have rolled me out the door. But it was soooo good.
But that wasn't the end of my suffering. Many years ago, Mike and I went to Paris where we visited the Louvre and the Champs-Elysees. While there, we got a crepe and it was wonderful. I wanted another later that night but Mike insisted we'd be getting crepes every day. Well we didn't, not a one. And I've bugged Mike about that for years. I hold out my empty hand and say "And yet I have no crepe", just to bug him.
Well, when we left the Bombay Palace and were walking back to the car, we passed a Crepe cart and Mike bought me a crepe. So no more using that joke I guess.
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| Photographic evidence that I received a crepe (inside joke) |
We did a little gift shopping then went back to the hotel to change and relax for a bit. We also needed to plan tomorrow's (Monday's) activities. We decided to take a boat ride around Doubtful Sound. We also decided to go to Glenorchy this afternoon. We're expecting rain so it's a nice drive by the lake would be a safe activity.
The drive was great. We were on the Southern shore of the lake and could look across to the mountains on the other side, very beautiful. There were a couple of narrow one lane sections. It was still two-way traffic but there were some blind turns where it would have been easy to find ourselves in a head-on crash. Mike tapped the horn at each blind corner, but we made it through with no issues.
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The road to Glenorchy |
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View from Bennet Bluff |
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| Another view from Bennet Bluff |
We spotted a scenic turnout to Bennet Bluff and took it. We climbed the trail and about 1/2 way up one of the guys coming down pointed at Mike and said, "I saw you today at church!!". Sure enough, it was one of the guys we'd seen that morning. We smiled and waved back then proceeded on.
The views from the top were really good. There was enough light to get some good pictures, but the clouds were slowly thickening so we decided not to stick around for too long.
We made it to Glenorchy. It was a beautiful area. There was a pier and several trails but it had started raining so we just looked from the car. We drove farther out of Glenorcy till we could see down the rest of the valley and took a few pictures, then came back to get a drink from the General Store.
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View North of Glenorchy |
It turns out they didn't have any soft drinks, just water. And all their fresh bakery items were gone, so Mike got some chocolate covered cookies and a bottle of water, then we headed back toward Queentown. The return trip was like coming except for more rain and no stop at the bluff.
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Return road from Glenorchy |
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| More road back from Glenorchy |
At lunch, Mike had spotted a hapanese restaurant that served shabu-shabu. I'd never even heard of it, but Mike assured me it would be light. We walked through town for about the 10th time to get dinner at the restaurant named Goku. I ordered a salad, some meat and veg to cook shabu-shabu style. The waitress convinced us to get an order of wagu gyoza. Once again, I was absolutely stuffed by the end of the meal. The salad really hit the spot but it all just kept piling on. At least this time I didn't have to top it off with a crepe.
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| Shabu Shabu for dinner |
We got back to the hotel, and I got the photos done for day 2 and released that blog. Now I'm just finishing today's blog. I might try to get day 3 released then it will be time for bed.
Todays steps was 8,100 or 3.7 miles
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