Our Queenstown Getaway

Queenstown: This is truly a very special place. I first went there many years ago as a child with my parents when we did the big tour of the two islands. Even then at a tender young age, it left an impression.

Guillaume and I decided that we wouldn’t do a big party to celebrate turning forty this year. Instead, we thought that we should treat ourselves to a little getaway, just the two of us. So months in advance we arranged for my parents to fly over to Auckland to look after our three kids for five days and four nights while we experienced Queenstown.

We decided on a ski trip, Guillaume, coming from Toulouse, not far from the French Pyrenees, has it in his blood, and I spent a ski season in Austria some fifteen years ago and managed to get a fair bit of skiing in between working and late night parties with the other seasonal workers.

The style of hotel we would normally go for would be boutique, but this time was different.  We were not after not only luxury, but also all of the facilities that a big hotel offers, especially after coming back from a day of skiing.

After having looked at all of the hotels in the area, we decided on The Hilton. The hotel is only about three years old and all of the entry level rooms looked like suites with separate living areas. Our only hesitation was that it’s situated out of town; but then we thought we’d be skiing most days anyway, and it turns out that they had a shuttle service into town as well as a ten-minute water taxi. We took the water taxi most times, which added to the overall experience.

Until our arrival, Queenstown had had a pretty dismal snowfall on the mountains, and then, when we flew in, it turned to blizzard-like conditions with that, dreamlike powdery snow. With this weather, we didn’t get to experience the Queenstown village in all of its picturesque glory, but it still took our breath away.

With so many years having past since I last had skis on my feet, the weather felt a little extreme for my liking. Especially when I was trying to focus on the coordination thing (think frozen over goggles by the time you reach the top of the mountain.) But it was fun all the same. At certain moments in the day, the clouds broke away and the sun shone, showing us the spectacular beauty of those snow-dumped mountains against the blue sky. Then, as quickly as we saw it, she was gone, and all we could see was whiteness.

Each day, after lunch, I was satisfied with my morning’s the skiing, I left Guillaume on the mountains and took the hotel bus back to relax. While he never admitted it – the lovely husband he is – I’m pretty certain he was relieved, so that he could get some serious skiing in.

The view from our hotel room

On the first day I booked myself into the hotel’s in-house spa, Eforea. When I arrived they took me to the change room to change into a robe and slippers, and I left my belongings in the assigned locker before meeting them back in the sitting room to fill out a questionnaire. I was pretty excited as I had only just read a great review about the spa, in the latest Mindfood magazine on the flight to Queenstown. I escaped into a ninety-minute, full body bliss. Then to just go back to a hotel room afterwards was the perfect finish. I wish I could have done it each day.

The second day, after the slopes, I made use of the sauna and pool, which, no doubt, helped my tired muscles. The third day, I treated myself to a simple hot bath with salts and a good read.

The Hilton exceeded our expectations. Guillaume, who travels a lot for business and gets to stay in five star hotels around the world (I know, poor him!) thought it was definitely up there with the best. If I had to pick at anything it would be that they didn’t have on-demand movies, only Sky. Neither did they have an iPod doc, just some old style plugin stereo for an MP3 player.

All but one of the nights we ate in town – all incredible food experiences: two of them by award winning restaurateurs, Josh Emmet and Fleur Caulton’s, Rātā for a beautiful fine dining experience and Madam Woo, for some Malaysian street food. Actually, I lie. We ate at Madam Woo twice, the first day for lunch and dinner the last night because it was so good and reasonably priced. The colonial Asian restaurant fit-out is also really cool. The day we left, we ate at Kappa Japanese just up from Madame Woo. It was inexpensive – lovely service and good quality, simple Japanese food.

When we arrived at the airport to fly home, one flight was being cancelled after the other because of a snowstorm, and hotels were being filled fast.  It was a stressful moment, and I was imagining sleeping at the airport that night, which wouldn’t have been a good ending. I called the Hilton to see if they could hold a room for us, and they were already experiencing an influx of bookings because of the flight cancellations. However they kindly held a room for us, giving us a priority as previous guests. Unfortunately I didn’t end up taking it because our flight was one of the very few to leave that afternoon.

It’s good for the soul to every so often, treat ourselves to a special getaway and also have couple-time away from the children and just “be”. Do you ever give yourself some “me time”?

If you look on my Instagram feed, you can see more photos, including those on the slopes. Just make you scroll down to find them.

I thought I’d finish with this photo of Guillaume – a perfect representation of how we felt there. Happy weekend everyone!

Mel xx