Madre and Padre invade the Kiwis!

Our adventure continues!

After some time in beautiful Tassie and a quick stop in Sydney to visit with cousin Em and Tony, Andrew and I made our way to New Zealand to meet up with Mom and Dad for a week long adventure. We started our trip in Queenstown and I almost thought we weren't going to make it! Apparently Mom and Dad caught the good flight in from Sydney. Their flight landed only 15 minutes before Andrew and my flight but from the sound of it I'd much rather have been on theirs! Coming into Queenstown there are lots of mountains that you have to fly over... which means LOTS of turbulence... which means my tummy was not a fan. We must have been blessed with horrid winds or something because mom and dad landed no problem while I, along with most of the plane was left reaching for my airsick bag! Luckily, I didn't have to use it but I felt terrible and have never been so glad to get off a plane.

Major crisis averted we met up with Mom and Dad and made our way to our hotel. Here's the view from our front door. Beeeautiful!

We headed out to grab some lunch and explore Queenstown since we were only there for one day. It's such a pretty little town basically settled in the middle of all these mountains... so everywhere you look is just pretty. Even normal streets and intersections looked great because of the beautiful backdrop!

We wandered down to the water and saw the steamship TSS Earnslaw which Grammo had seen and has a picture of when she was in NZ years ago. Pretty cool! (Shout out to you Grammo!)

We eventually made our way up to one of the mountains that has a gondola ride up (like straight up, almost vertical) the side of the mountain and drops you off at a viewing platform where they also happen to have GO-CARTS! Here are some pictures of the view. Breathtaking! I wouldn't mind living in Queenstown if I didn't have to fly into with all that turbulence all the time.

I don't have pictures of us on the go-carts because I couldn't bring my camera but here's a great one of Mom and Dad and Andrew gearing up! (He he he... I love being the photographer in cases like this!) I might be able to link a few once I get the website from Mom that were taken on the course... stay tuned for those...There's one of Dad and Andrew walking back up to the viewing platform from the bottom of the go-cart finish line... the hike back up was a pretty steep incline! By the way, I won the race the first time and the boys only won the 2nd time because mom and I gave them a head start because they were in the slower sleds for extra tall people...

We had a nice dinner at a great little Italian place that night and the next morning we just wandered around the city a bit while Mom found a blue post box to send a little card to Grammo! (Hi again Grammo!)

We had breakfast (they have bagels in NZ!!!! Woohooo!) and set off to the Shotover jet which dad and I had done last time we were in Queenstown. No pics of that either... you get wet and aren't allowed to bring your camera because you have to hold on! 360 degree turns on the river would be tough while trying to take a picture! It was a blast though and I've never seen mom laugh so hard! Fun times in Queenstown!