Settling down in Queenstown

 In Queenstown, no matter what direction you look, the view is breathtaking!

We love our new life in Queenstown. The town reminds me of the little village in The Grinch as we are surrounded by mountains and houses on the side of hills, its so cute, I can't wait to see it in the winter when the mountains will be covered in snow. when we first arrived we spent a week in the Southern Laughter hostel, we had a double room and a balcony overlooking Queenstown hill. 


The hostel staff were friendly enough and it was quite a party hostel so we had a great time!  We spent Easter there with our new mates and took full advantage of how cheap chocolate is in New Zealand. The don't serve alcohol in NZ on a bank holiday unless you are drinking it with a meal, so on Easter Monday we stayed home until midnight when the bars opened up again! Quite a crazy tradition there but we had a very fun night! 

Apparently it is 'shoulder season' at the mo, AKA no jobs!! And this will be the way until Winter starts in June,so I am a bit worried about our money situation. We did get the pick of the houses though as not many people are renting at the moment and lots of people are leaving after spending summer here.

Our house hunt was interesting to say the least! We were shown around a few rooms where the stench was unbearable and the bed only just fit! So we opted out of the shared houses are found a cute little studio apartment just to our selves! It is quite small, a little bathroom and then our bedroom and kitchen, and we have a massive TV right in front of our bed!! (which Nick is VERY happy about). We have already put our stamp on our little home, hanging up our paintings from Fiji and buying nice bedding. We have also mastered the art of cake baking with no scales.. amazingly it worked and we are making very nice cakes... probably too often! 

We have pretty much explored the whole of Queenstown already, doing lots of day walks and lots of partying. There are so many cute little gardens around here, where you can play frisbee golf! Which is awesome! I'm not very good to be honest and my arm hurt the next day.. but Nick loved it! We live right by a huge forest which is fun to explore and the beach at the bottom of our road is a pebble beach so we spend a lot of time skimming stones and just looking out over the water.  .

We went to Arrowtown yesterday which is a cute little village 15K from Queenstown. It is a town that looks like it is from a cowboy movie! It is pretty much just one street with cute shops and an old pharmacy. The surrounding walks are very pretty, everything is so glittery because of all the minerals! Arrowtown is famous for its gold, so we went hunting but just found some cool looking sparkly rocks! 

 There was a festival going on while we were there, celebrating the coming of Autumn, it was really fun, quite bizarre though, lots of men dressed as cows doing some sort of relay race eating biscuits and cake!

I think we are going to love our time in Queenstown there is so much to do and see! We are hoping to Climb Ben Lomond before we leave which is a huge mountain! I can't wait for the  ski season to start so I can learn how to snowboard and get a job!

Sarah

xxx