Welcome to Downtown Queenstown! The town is quaint, yet rich. It has character, yet it's clean and fresh too. Lots of local flair, but also full of standards like Louis Vuitton and Starbucks. It was the perfect mix of both and Blane and just fell in love with the place.
We spent our first afternoon just meandering around the area, checking stores out and seeing places in person that we'd read about in our guidebooks. Queenstown is very walkable-in fact, it's somewhat more difficult to drive because some of the streets are so narrow-so not having a car that first day worked out just fine. Above is a super cool clothing store (left) that Blane really liked. On the right is the window display for Louis Vuitton. And yes, we walked in there too. Do you know my husband? Haha
I don't know what type of store this was but it made me think of my sister :)
The local Starbucks. I was really disappointed to find that they had nothing that was different from the Starbucks back in the States. Usually at Starbucks abroad, something is different-be it a mug or a type of sweet they offer to a different kind of drink or even a cool gift card! But sadly, New Zealand Starbuck's aren't really that plentiful and they might as well have been in California. Sad face :(
I thought this was funny and if you know my love of caffeine, then you understand why I took this picture. :)
Besides all the shops, there were randon grassy knolls throughout the town too. It was a beautiful day and people were just hanging out at spots like these.
One of the reasons why Queenstown is so beautiful is because of its location-look at the backdrop!
One of the first eating places we stopped at was Patagona Chocolates, located directly across from where our water taxi docked. They are known for their homemade chocolates and decadent hot chocolate. Instead of cheese boards they do chocolate boards and here's ours. We chose all dark chocolate, but they have milk chocolate too. We brought our leftovers back home with us and still have some in our fridge! Mmmm :)
The one super-touristy thing that they have is a gondola that goes all the way up one of their biggest hills so that you can see the vista of the area. Since it was a clear and sunny day, we decided to check it out. Here I am with our tickets!
On the way up was this thing (bottom left). Queenstown is known as the "birthplace of bungy" and people were bungy jumping off the mountain! Eeeek! If you look closely you can see a person flying through the air. No thank you. I think I'll pass!
At the top the views were amazing.
You could mountain bike or luge back down the mountain, but we opted to just take the gondola back again. Adventure-seekers we were not that day :)
Next up, let's get to grubbin' shall we?
Kiwi out,
Mrs. S
