New Zealand visit suggestions

[ttfitz]

Sub - I noticed you are in Wellington, NZ, and thought I'd post here. We are planning a trip to Australia in late June/early July, and our return flight is out of Auckland, so we figured on spending a few days at the end of our trip in New Zealand. Any suggestions on places to go/things to do?

Anyone else with suggestions are welcome to chip in, too.

Oh, "we" would be the wife and I, 20-year-old son, and 15-year-old daughter.

Thanks.

[stustunz]

45 views and no answers
here is a link to 101 must do's for nz
http://www.aatravel.co.nz/101/

have a look and ask questions and i will try and answer them for you

[sub]

Sorry - I didn't see this post earlier.

If you want to see some awesome parts of the country, maybe look into flying into Queenstown for a couple of days. Huge mountains, lakes, awesome views. I just spent a week in that part of the country. I guess there is awesome views in a lot of the country though, even if you're just staying around the Auckland there should be a lot to do (view from resturant at top of the sky tower etc).

stustunz look above looks pretty good. I guess it all comes down to what sort of things you want to do. Lots of options.

[Jaggy]

Lots of options.

and a few days is not a lot of time

[cncb]

This reminds me of several years ago when I visited NZ for a week. Really beautiful country and we had a lot of fun. We decided to rent a car for our "tour" of the country which happened to be a little Kia with a manual transmission. Shifting with my left hand while driving on the left side of the road proved to be occasionally funny (the wiper controls seemed to be on the opposite side too) but mostly stressful and scary so I wouldn't recommend that . I don't remember exactly where it was but we stopped at a place called "Kiwi World" (referring to the fruit) where even though we were the only ones there the guy still drove us around in the Kiwi "tram" and gave us the full tour. That was fun...

[ttfitz]

45 views and no answers
here is a link to 101 must do's for nz
http://www.aatravel.co.nz/101/

have a look and ask questions and i will try and answer them for you

Thanks, I will check that out. Looks like plenty to choose from.

[ttfitz]

If you want to see some awesome parts of the country, maybe look into flying into Queenstown for a couple of days. Huge mountains, lakes, awesome views. I just spent a week in that part of the country. I guess there is awesome views in a lot of the country though, even if you're just staying around the Auckland there should be a lot to do (view from resturant at top of the sky tower etc).

We had been thinking of coming into Christchurch, but I'll take a look at Queenstown, thanks. Yeah, I guess our view from way over here of New Zealand is "awesome views", so we were trying to figure out how best to do that. The Sky Tower restaurant looks interesting.

Thanks.

[ttfitz]

Shifting with my left hand while driving on the left side of the road proved to be occasionally funny (the wiper controls seemed to be on the opposite side too) but mostly stressful and scary so I wouldn't recommend that .

Wow, I hadn't thought about that - I was (mostly) fine with the idea of driving on the "wrong" side of the road, but it hadn't occurred to me that the gear shift would also be opposite. May be too much to think about.

I'm also in Virginia (Northern).

Thanks.

[ttfitz]

and a few days is not a lot of time

That is certainly true. Not to slight your beautiful and wonderous country, but our trip has been largely about Australia, and it was a matter of frequent flyer seat availability that we ended up leaving from Auckland. Seemed a shame to be leaving from the country without seeing a bit of it, even if for only a few days - trying to fit an entire country the size of Australia into the 3 weeks we have is proving to be really hard, as it is. A whole lot of something is going to give, that's for sure.

[Jaggy]

I wasn't trying to be derogatory or trying put you off with my comment. I think as you are going to be in Auckland anyway you should try to see some of NZ while you are here if you can find the time....... what I was concerned about is (from my point of view anyway as someone that doesn't really like cities.... there is a reason the Boss & I live out in the country & are not farmers ) what you could get to without loosing a fair amount of time with travel in those few days.