Apr. 8th, 2024

canyonwalker: Hangin' in a hammock (life's a beach)
New Zealand Travelog #6
Hilton Queenstown Resort - Mon, 8 Apr 2024, 9pm

The drive over to our hotel was quick after we landed at— and finished gawking at the scenery from— the Queenstown airport. Tonight and tomorrow night we're staying at the Hilton Queenstown Resort. Here's a photo I snapped from the balcony outside the guest lobby.

Hilton Resort Queenstown, NZ (Apr 2024)

Why a resort?, you might ask. Well, why not! Many of the hotels in Queenstown seemed spendy and called themselves resorts. Go big or go home, we figured, so we booked a room at a resort property. We picked one where the pictures matched the adjectives in the ad copy. But by no means did we pull out all the stops. This hotel has generously sized regular rooms as well as multi-room "residences". We booked a standard room. Affordable luxury is the name of our game.

But then a funny thing happened on the way to the registration desk. Remember how I said there are multi-room residences, but we didn't book one? Well, they upgraded us to one. One with views over the lake and the far mountains, too! Hey, that Hilton Diamond status I've had for years has to come through with something good occasionally.

Our residence at the Hilton Queenstown Resort (April 2024)

Our residence has a nice living room (above) with a dining table (not pictured) and a small kitchen. There are two bedrooms.

No, that's not a mirror - it's TWO bedrooms in our "residence" (Apr 2024)

Yes, this photo looks like some kind of mirror trick, but it's actually two nearly identical bedrooms. The reason they're nearly identical is that the one on the right has an en suite bathroom while the one on the left has to share the "public" bathroom with anyone who's in the living room/dining room area. Thus we picked the one on the left.

Here's another view of the living room showing our patio and garden:

Looking out the living room doors of our Hilton Resort "residence" in Queenstown (Apr 2024)

Yes, there's another dining table out on the patio.

Here's another photo showing more of the garden and the view:

Our patio and garden overlooking the lake an mountains at the Hilton Resort Queenstown (Apr 2024)

This all would be amazing if we were staying here for a week. Alas we're only here for a few days. We'll barely have time to try this room— er, residence— on for size. But it's definitely nice having the extra space to spread out.
canyonwalker: My other car is a pair of hiking boots (in beauty I walk)
New Zealand Travelog #7
Hilton Queenstown Resort - Tue, 9 Apr 2024, 7:30am

Last night and this morning were a matter of "Early to bed, early to rise." I was tired out, anyway, from 26½ hours of transit with only ~4 hours of sleep. And that 26½ hours only started after I was already up for 12 hours. I hit the hay just a few minutes after 9pm. The upside of laying down early is getting up early. ...Well, it's an upside as long as there's something to do. This morning I puttered around for an hour or so before sunrise... then went outside to watch the sunrise!



As you can see in this video it's really amazing having a walk-out room— I mean, residence— with a nice garden patio area. It's literally just a few steps to the edge of Lake Wakatipu.

Sunrise at the Hilton Queenstown Resort (Apr 2024)

The video doesn't show a view back towards the hotel, so here's a photo (above). That's the Hilton Queenstown Resort in the foreground on the right. The mountains the distance are the Remarkables, with peaks around 6,000'. The elevation at the lake is about 1,000'.

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