Today dawned bright and clear, so looking like glorious weather for my tour and was sat on my balcony having a leisurely breakfast and cup of tea, only to catch the Queentown flyby taking off from Queenstown airport. It was pretty cool, as they flew past the hotel, over the lake to do U turn and head off wherever they were flying to. Not any fighter planes or old warplanes unfortunately, just regular modern passenger planes by the look of them, but it was nice to see.

Got picked up for my tour just after 10am and discovered that there were only 2 of us on the tour, which was great, nice and personal. Our tour guide was actually an extra in LOTR, and her father and some of her friends were also long term extras, so she had lots of great stories. We saw the locations for Ithilien (Oliphants Mr Frodo!), we drove past Deer Park Height's which was the location for many Rohan scenes, but unfortunately it's in private hands, so you can't go up any more, the location for the Argonath, with a bonus of the original bungy jumping bridge thrown in (no, I wasn't not even remotely tempted, I'll try a lot of things, but not that!) and onto Arrowtown for the ambush of Isildur and finished up at Lake Hayes, which wasn't a location, but is a nice spot to finish the day on.

What made this tour good, was they had loads of insider memorabilia, like the call sheets for the locations, copies of the investors scripts (it was actually codenamed Jamboree - a gripping 3 part project about a boy scout troop!?!?) a copy of the Weta Calendar (one of those in-office jokes) (some people there have got a very strange sense of humour, but I couldn't stop laughing at it - does that say something about me? Probably…) and at the end, an amazing collection of replica weaponry used in the film, so you can dress up and have your photos taken as a character wielding one of the swords or daggers. I declined. But did handle most of the swords, which are impressive!

Hit the Lonestar in town for tea and cleared my plate again, after watching the sun set over the mountains, it's such a great view.

Not sure about Queenstown, it seems nice, but there is kind of an edge of desperation in the town centre, like everyone is determined to have a good time, but not in the kind of relaxed kiwi way I've encountered so far. Maybe because there are so many tourists, short and long term, and because it is so focused on adventures and experiences that everyone feels they should be hyper all the time. I don't know, it seems nice enough, just felt a bit off somehow, not necessarily in a bad way, but just not appealing to me. I think if I was coming here to ski or try some of the adventure stuff, I'd probably feel differently about it.