Well, we had a fabulous trip, much of it thanks to wonderful advice from the folks on this forum. So I’m going to do a trip report, but break it down into a few shorter submissions. This first one will just describe the bones of the trip – when, where, how. I’ll do another on accommodations and others on activities.

The first big quandary, of course was when to go – we like to travel shoulder season to avoid crowds, and to maybe get some lower prices. Their spring (our fall) is just bad for us work-wise, so we decided to go OUR spring (their fall). I was concerned about going too late and having the weather be too cool so we wanted late summer/early fall. I was well warned about avoiding the school holidays and Easter weekend, so we ended up traveling ON Easter and getting to NZ right after Easter. We planned our itinerary to start southernmost first and work our way north, to do the coldest places first. We left home on Mar 23 and arrived home Apr 12.

The next hardest thing to deal with was to cut down the places we would visit to something reasonable to do in the 3 weeks we had. Our first decision was to only do the South Island of NZ (and not all of that). We had originally wanted to do both Sydney and the GBR in Australia, but quickly realized it was too much, so we ended up just going to Sydney (since we were ‘in the neighborhood’). In NZ, I knew I wanted to spend a lot of time in LOTR country and the west coast, and also Christchurch. I had to sacrifice Dunedin, and the northern part of South Island, but we have reason to go back now.

In order to start looking for airfare, I needed an itinerary, so after much consideration, and consultation with this board we ended up with:
Queenstown – 4 nights
Te Anau – 2 nights
Wanaka – 1 night (to break up the drive to Fox Glacier)
Fox Glacier – 2 nights
Hokitika – 1 night (again, to break up the drive)
Christchurch – 3 nights
Sydney – 5 nights.

So 18 nights of accommodation, plus the travel days, about 3 weeks even. This worked out very well for us, I don’t think I’d change a thing about the itinerary. We never had more than 4 hours of driving in a single day, and we had plenty to do in Queenstown for 4 days and Christchurch for 3 days. With Sydney, I thought that if we felt like it, we could do a day trip to the Blue Mountains, but there was so much to do in Sydney, we decided against it.

So there you have it.

Alice

<So there you have it?>

Please tell me you're just getting warmed up!

Very smart to go after Easter - we did this one year and loved it - no crowds, kids back in school and we still had nice weather.

Please add your next installments to this thread - easier for readers to follow.

Impatiently waiting for more...

I was just thinking about you the other day, and I'm dying to hear all about your yarn discoveries!

If you can, please post all of your trip report in this thread; it makes it much easier to find the whole thing for future reference.

Lee Ann

Okay, I'll keep it in this thread, but too bad it says Part 1 - I'm not sure I can change that, can I? Anyway, this post is about our accommmodations:



Accommodations – we stayed in apartments and B&Bs, because that’s how we usually like to travel. Finding apartments and B&Bs in NZ was very easy. Finding a B&B in Sydney was a little more challenging but it worked out just fine.

Here’s where we stayed:
Queenstown – Villa del Lago, highly recommended. We had a beautiful one bedroom apartment, with spectacular views of the lake. Very nice kitchen, nice sitting area with a gas fire, even had a washer and dryer in our unit. You could walk into town, but the path is unlit, so at night we drove, but never had trouble parking.

Te Anau – Campbell Autolodge, also highly recommended. Again, we had a one bedroom apartment, with views of the lake. A nice little balcony to sit one, fully functional kitchen. Definitely walkable into the small town, day or night.

Wanaka – the Moorings, recommended. We had a studio apartment – nice but not spectacular. Again, beautiful views of the lake. On the other hand it was for one night and it was practically IN town, so we could walk everywhere (you can see that this is an important criteria for me).

Fox Glacier – Fox Glacier Lodge, fine. There aren’t a lot of choices at Fox Glacier, this was a B&B. Our room was small (with practically no storage), but fine, decent bathroom. Breakfast was cook AND clean up on your own, which was fine, but a number of guests did grumble about it.

Hokitika – Shining Star – recommended. I broke my being able to walk into town rule on this one. It’s a bunch of cabins on the beach, which I found quite appealing. The cabin was nice, well equipped and you could just walk a very short distance down to the beach. I found the town itself no great shakes, so not staying in town (especially for one night) didn’t really matter.

Christchurch – Eliza’s Manor on Bealey, highly recommended. A beautiful historic house, modernized where it needs to be (the bathrooms for instance), furnished with lovely antiques. The owners were very present, and very helpful. The room was very comfortable, and the bathroom was very nice (GREAT shower, always appreciated). This is a B&B, they make an unbelievable cooked breakfast, choice of 8 or so options (I had French toast with grilled bananas one morning, just to give you an example). Lunch is barely necessary. Well located, we walked everywhere. Internet available for guests.

Sydney – Bed & Breakfast Sydney Harbour, highly recommended. I really wanted to stay in the Rocks area, and the hotel prices there are out of sight. This is an old house, with all the old house peculiarities and character. A little hippy dippy, which is fine with me. Plenty of space, decent breakfast, Internet available for guests. And a fabulous location, which was key for me in Sydney. We either walked or took a ferry to everywhere we went – no bus, no train, and no taxi. The other guests we met at breakfast all were equally pleased they had found such a nice place to stay in this expensive area.

Alice

And a wool report for Lee Ann - quite a disappointment, I'm sorry to say. I went to a number of small yarn shops (one in Queenstown, one in Wanaka) with pretty ordinary stuff. I asked them about their clientele and they both said it was mostly 'old ladies'. I did NOT ask if they thought I was in that category, I didn't want to know!

In Christchurch is a yarn shop that advertises itself as the largest yarn shop in the SOUTHERN HEMISPHERE. Well, it was big alright, but again, no great shakes. Lots of Rowan, lots of Jo Sharpe, lots of Patons. Then the rest of the yarn is organized by ply - 2 ply, 3 ply.... up to 14 ply. The New Zealand brands seemed.... fine, but nothing to go out of my way for.

They DID have a teeny bit of Touch yarn, which was what I was mostly interested in, and it seemed very nice. I might go ahead and order on the Internet from somewhere. But the patterns they carried were pretty mundane, and I noticed a pretty big emphasis on crochet.

Alice

>>In Christchurch is a yarn shop that advertises itself as the largest yarn shop in the SOUTHERN HEMISPHERE. Well, it was big alright, but again, no great shakes. Lots of Rowan, lots of Jo Sharpe, lots of Patons. Then the rest of the yarn is organized by ply - 2 ply, 3 ply.... up to 14 ply. The New Zealand brands seemed.... fine, but nothing to go out of my way for. <<

So lots of stuff we can get in the States, then. That's a little disappointing.

When I've looked at NZ yarns online, I notice most of them are described by their ply. I had to read descriptions carefully to find out their weights.

Thanks for satisfying my curiosity.

Lee Ann