"Exploring is delightful to look forward to and back upon, but it is not comfortable at the time, unless it be such an easy nature as not to deserve the name"
and I am an explorer so that's that. It was definitely an experience, and definitely not comfortable. And I mean, I could try to be optimistic about it, but I think I find more joy in complaining.We started off on the wrong foot when the Welly wind was so bad it BROKE our plane before take off, so our flight was canceled. It didn't bother me much. It's vacation, I'm in beautiful New Zealand, I'm going with the flow. We rescheduled for noon the next day, already missing out on over 24 hours in Auckland. Little did we know that it was actually a blessing. It was annoying to have to pay for a taxi back and forth to the airport, and back again, though.
Here is a beautiful pic from take-off when we finally did take off.
After just a 45 minute flight we were there, and on a shuttle to our disgusting hostel. The people at the front desk were anything but friendly, the carpets were all worn and dirty in the hallways, the bathrooms were nasty and I immediately came to the conclusion that I wasn't showering during our little trip after seeing the showers. To top it off I had a bottom bunk, tetris-ed between two other sets of bunk beds, so that my head was in between two other people's feet. Also everyone's luggage was pushed up against my bed and I could barely get into it. It was just sketchy. Not a good vibe right off the bat.
We (obviously) got out of the hostel quick and went wandering.
We ended up at the Sky Tower which was probably the highlight of our trip. It's the tallest building in the southern hemisphere. We took the elevator up to the 66th floor or something like that, and there was plexi-glass in the floor so you could see yourself getting higher and higher. At the top there is a big 360 degree look-out that was beautiful. You could see everything! There was also more plexi-glass you could stand on and feel like you were floating 66 stories in the air. I think I was more scared to stand on that then I was for bungee jumping.
After riding the elevator back down, we stopped in the casino which was at the bottom floor and did a little gambling. Hahaha. We are now addicted to slots. I could have walked out $2 richer but of course I got greedy and ended up $4 poorer. It was worth it though. Hilarious.
Speaking of hilarious, we have no idea how we got roped into paying $30 to go in the "Ice House" ... but it was probably worth the money due to how hard we were laughing when we got in there. They made it sound like some palace made of ice, and for some reason we didn't even think twice about paying to get in, but when we got in it was about the size of a dorm room and no one was in there. We had to wear weird rental coats, too. Haha. Strange.
We just didn't get good vibes from Auckland. We couldn't find anywhere youthful or relatively cheap to go out to, the streets were dirty, the hostel was dirty, just not a good time. We watched most of the royal wedding in the hostel before going up to bed, at which time I discovered a dreaded BED BUG under my pillow before laying down!!! EW! We went down to the desk and they moved us to another room, which had MORE BED BUGS crawling all over the pillow as soon as we got there! Ew ew ew ew!!! It was like 11:00pm and we were supposed to stay until the next day but we got out of there quick. With no real destination or plan, we got out to the street where we passed by a drunken fight and were yelled at by multiple people out of their car windows. We just weren't feelin' like giving Auckland a second chance at that point so we just got a taxi to the airport, changed our flight so we could get home earlier, and spent midnight to 6:40am trying to sleep there.Finally at like 8:30am this morning I was home and loving life in my own bed.
* * *
After all my travels over the past two weeks covering almost the entire country from bottom to top, I have to say, Queenstown was definitely my favorite. The little city is jam packed and pretty, not to mention the mountains that seriously surround you while you're there. The little harbor is so close and there are tons and tons of places to eat, drink, and shop. It's full of adventurous, adrenaline-junkie, thrill seeking, outdoorsy attractive people, too ;) I must say.
QUEENSTOWNSo now I'm sitting here in my room, getting a little paranoid about bed bugs and doing ALL of my laundry. It's Saturday night but I am exausted and have a little adventure trip planned for tomorrow to end this break with a bang, anyway, so I'm just gonna rest up and work on some school work and things. School starts again on Monday. Yikes.
No comments:
Post a Comment