This morning, Greg left us, flying back to Auckland. For ourselves continuing in Queenstown, we have an easy day catching up with friends over lunch and dinner. We walked into town again late morning for lunch with Caroline, an old friend of Kim and Jo’s.
She along with her husband Ross have owned various restaurants in Queenstown over the years. We were invited to meet at their current restaurant (or possibly one of them).
With the Covid lockdown and the lack of international tourists, times are tough for all businesses especially those in the restaurant business. We offered to pay for our lunch in their restaurant after our catch-up and she kindly accepted.
But their employee waitress put through the bill for the entire table, including her meal. So, we ended up paying for a restaurateur to dine with us in her own restaurant! Times are tough, and we are very fortunate to be relatively unscathed by the Covid crisis, so we’ll just be grateful for that.
In the evening, we had a lovely dinner with my German friend Beatrice, whom I had met through Couchsurfing. She and her partner JP live in Arrowtown. He makes amazing fruit cakes and had made one specially for us to takeaway after dinner. But somehow, we all forgot at the end of the evening and we had to return for it the next day.