Weekend away: yay!

So we finally got away from it all for a while at Easter, because… thank you New Zealand, there are three public holidays over that weekend and it is just no cost effective to open up shop on a public holiday!!

We started our weekend with a road trip (as always, anywhere from here is a road trip!) to Queenstown, where we stayed for a night, then went on to Te Anau before returning home again.

Ed Sheeran was on this weekend, as was the air show war birds over Wanaka, making Queenstown quite pleasant as there weren’t many people left there!

We discovered bits of it we haven’t seen, including the Queenstown gardens, which are cunningly hidden right on the banks of the lake on their own little peninsula!

Plus, the knee actually held up quite well all weekend despite extensive walking (for me) thanks to the new added peg leg! We also revisited the Irish bar where we met Keith, Sharon and the crew when they came over for the Lions tour, although it was much quieter and more spacious this time!

Queenstown is a beautiful town but spoilt by the extensive tourism that the area now has, so it was nice to wander around the town with a lot less people in it, a reason we do not usually stick around!

Next stop was Te Anau. Gateway to Milford Sound, and a heap of the great walks, but relatively small in itself. Still, me and my new added peg leg were still doing ok.

The Clifden suspension bridge is a tourist stop on our route home. It is the longest in NZ and dates to the 1920’s. It remained in operation right through till 1979 before they built a new bridge adjacent to it for the traffic.

Next stop was a curious little place on the way home, Tuatapere, I have no idea how it survives to be honest. It is tiny, and in the middle of nowhere! But, it has a curious wee museum / cafe that frankly we have tried to stop at millions of times but always was shut! We were in luck this time! The ‘museum’ artefacts were all stuff I recognised from my childhood. Does that mean I am now old?! They also had Cornish pasties, you can imagine my excitement, till I bit into it and realised it or its owner had been nowhere near Cornwall, it was only the shape that was authentic! Even Tuatapere had its own wee reserve to walk around. Who knew?