![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Sunday March 14
We got rained on some more this morning in Auckland while waiting for the bus to the airport. It was actually kind of refreshing, actually, and it was further mitigated by knowing we'd spend the next few hours in airports and on planes.
Auckland International Airport is fairly small by the standards of, say, SFO or Logan. One international terminal and one domestic terminal and that's it. Security at the domestic terminal was distinctly light compare with US security - after computerized check-in, we were never asked to show ID to anyone, and we only had to produce boarding passes at boarding time, not at the security gate.
The flight to Queenstown was unsurprisingly brief and fairly dull due to the cloud cover for most of the way. But when we were about 15 minutes away from our destination, the clouds cleared and we got the very dramatic sight of the mountains below. (We also had dramatic turbulence, also due to the mountains!) When you step out of the plane and onto the tarmac, though, it's totally worth it because you're looking straight at Queenstown's most famous mountain range, the Remarkables (see photo). You just kind of stop, and stare in wonder.
We got a bus into downtown and found the place we were staying for the night. Turner Lodge is the nicer half of Alpine Lodge, but it retains a quite strong hostel flavor from its neighbor. You get a private room with your own bathroom and a TV, but that's about it - you'd better have your own soap and shampoo. But for the equivalent of about US$63 per night, you really can't complain too much. Oh, and as a bonus they have a cat on the property, who was happy to be petted and fawned over by two cat-deprived humans. They also have free wireless, but it's painfully slow.
Downtown Queenstown caters to the outdoors crowd - where in Auckland you couldn't go two blocks without seeing a convenience store and a Chinese restaurant, here it's a camping&tramping store everywhere you look. Which is great - and there's no shortage of hiking to do in the area!
The other thing that downtown specializes in is restaurants of every variety. Happily for the hiking and backpacking crowd, the vast majority of restaurants are both tasty and inexpensive. Once you get to Queenstown you can eat and sleep on the cheap. Which is great, because you'll want to save your dollars for some of the many attractions in and about Queenstown, about which more in the next couple of days.
We spent most of what remained of the afternoon taking one of the easy in-town walks around a little peninsula and through the Queenstown gardens. The lakeshore walk is beautiful, giving one abide introduction to the various mountains that surround Lake Wakatipu. It's just gorgeous. The gardens are really nice too, with an extensive rose garden, a pond, and other assorted plantings. There's also a Frisbee golf course that runs through the park and gardens which is free for anyone to use.
Tasty dinner at a 2-for-1 Indian place, then bed. Beds not all that comfy, but usable at the price we're paying. Tomorrow: Cruise on the lake and Queenstown gondola.
Post from mobile portal m.livejournal.com
We got rained on some more this morning in Auckland while waiting for the bus to the airport. It was actually kind of refreshing, actually, and it was further mitigated by knowing we'd spend the next few hours in airports and on planes.
Auckland International Airport is fairly small by the standards of, say, SFO or Logan. One international terminal and one domestic terminal and that's it. Security at the domestic terminal was distinctly light compare with US security - after computerized check-in, we were never asked to show ID to anyone, and we only had to produce boarding passes at boarding time, not at the security gate.
The flight to Queenstown was unsurprisingly brief and fairly dull due to the cloud cover for most of the way. But when we were about 15 minutes away from our destination, the clouds cleared and we got the very dramatic sight of the mountains below. (We also had dramatic turbulence, also due to the mountains!) When you step out of the plane and onto the tarmac, though, it's totally worth it because you're looking straight at Queenstown's most famous mountain range, the Remarkables (see photo). You just kind of stop, and stare in wonder.
We got a bus into downtown and found the place we were staying for the night. Turner Lodge is the nicer half of Alpine Lodge, but it retains a quite strong hostel flavor from its neighbor. You get a private room with your own bathroom and a TV, but that's about it - you'd better have your own soap and shampoo. But for the equivalent of about US$63 per night, you really can't complain too much. Oh, and as a bonus they have a cat on the property, who was happy to be petted and fawned over by two cat-deprived humans. They also have free wireless, but it's painfully slow.
Downtown Queenstown caters to the outdoors crowd - where in Auckland you couldn't go two blocks without seeing a convenience store and a Chinese restaurant, here it's a camping&tramping store everywhere you look. Which is great - and there's no shortage of hiking to do in the area!
The other thing that downtown specializes in is restaurants of every variety. Happily for the hiking and backpacking crowd, the vast majority of restaurants are both tasty and inexpensive. Once you get to Queenstown you can eat and sleep on the cheap. Which is great, because you'll want to save your dollars for some of the many attractions in and about Queenstown, about which more in the next couple of days.
We spent most of what remained of the afternoon taking one of the easy in-town walks around a little peninsula and through the Queenstown gardens. The lakeshore walk is beautiful, giving one abide introduction to the various mountains that surround Lake Wakatipu. It's just gorgeous. The gardens are really nice too, with an extensive rose garden, a pond, and other assorted plantings. There's also a Frisbee golf course that runs through the park and gardens which is free for anyone to use.
Tasty dinner at a 2-for-1 Indian place, then bed. Beds not all that comfy, but usable at the price we're paying. Tomorrow: Cruise on the lake and Queenstown gondola.
Post from mobile portal m.livejournal.com
