We Take Ourselves With Us

The first morning of our stay in Murray's Bay, we followed some neighborhood walkers and found an even faster route to the village!  The night before after dinner at Pattaya, we had popped our heads into the Montrose Cafe , looking at the menu and chatting with a waitress about GF breakfast options.  Turns out the cafe is super serious about GF and food allergies and had a whole menu!  (We'll never win the lottery, but our luck on vacations is seriously amazing.) The same waitress, Zina, recognized us when we came in for brekkie.  She was super friendly and chatty, so we got to know all sorts of things about her.  Fun story: Zina's never been to the US but went with her family to Mexico a while back.  They were in a small town and wandered into what they thought was a restaurant.  Turns out it was the club of a drug cartel; her uncle talked them out of it.  A few weeks later, they saw the same place on tv: it was the home base of El Chapo...

After a lovely New Year's Eve sleep, we started packing to make the flight from Queenstown to Auckland.  Our AirBnB host was super nice about letting us leave our bags in the apartment until we left, so we were free to search out breakfast along the lake.  We had heard good things about the Public Kitchen and Bar , and the idea of starting the new year off basking in the sun was ideal.  The service was superb and brekkie was wonderful: chicken and waffles, pancakes, thai curry (for our non-breakfast breakfaster), several Americanos, yum! Note Penn's new hat.  Somehow, somewhere, he lost his much-beloved Mammoth Caves hat, so we found this one for about $11 US.  Same color and theme (parks).  To whomever found the MC hat, I hope you enjoy it as much as he did. Fluffy Queenstown clouds. We had made great use of the NZ Super Shuttle service while traveling around the islands.  It's basically a passenger van with a hitc...