Joke of the Day: Two Floridians and an Aussie were driving up the mountain to see snow. That is both the joke and the punchline...read on to discover why!! (And, just a little warning to all our non-Floridian readers who are well-acquainted with winter, you are going to find this blog very, very entertaining). So. Here it is, the end of May, and Queenstown had yet to see any permanent snowfall for the winter season. We've had dustings here and there, but it always melts off the mountaintops within a day or two. Well, not anymore. On Tuesday, it start snowing...and it did not stop until yesterday! Let me emphasize that it did not snow here in town. That happens rarely, maybe once a year or so, I'm told. No, the snowfall was centered on and ... read more

Well, just settle in and get comfortable…it’s gonna be a long blog. For everyone who has been waiting for some truly spectacular scenery…for everyone who was wondering when we’d see the “real” New Zealand…this blog is for you. If you don’t read any of our other blogs or look at any of our photos, read and look at these. This is the one you’ve been waiting for. And I took an embarrassing number of photos for all of you (ahem…428, but who’s counting?), of which about 150 made it into this blog, so don’t miss the 7 extra pages of photos…it’s worth a couple minutes to sit down and enjoy!! So I’ll back up to Saturday, when we worked (count ‘em) almost NINETEEN straight hours at good ol’ Rydges Hotel. Both of us went in on ... read more

Hi everyone! I know we just sent a blog a couple of days ago, but we've had some lovely excursions up to Arrowtown to check out the beginnings of the autumn foliage. We also discovered (THANK YOU, THANK YOU!!!!!!!) an amazing restaurant that gives us a taste of home...and the funny thing is, it's French! Arrowtown has this amazing little cafe called "Bonjour" that serves absolutely the yummiest food we've had in this country, hands-down. I went last week and sat under the crisp leaves and devoured Burgundy snails drenched in garlic butter with fresh-baked baguette. Yesterday afternoon Jeremy and I went up and I nearly cried when I bit into my croque madame poulet - toasted French bread topped with chicken and melted cheese, smothered in creamy bechamel sauce, and topped with a fried egg. ... read more

Greetings everyone!! Highlights from the past couple of weeks in good ol' Queenstown include: 1. A bizarre combination of a severe thunderstorm and an earthquake. What is even stranger is that earthquakes are far more common here than thunderstorms! NZ gets over 100 earthquakes a year strong enough to be felt, but only a handful of lightning and thunder. To experience both of them at the same time is probably unheard of. Yet, that was our experience last week! We awoke around midnight to an ear-shattering clap of thunder and sat there watching the lightning for half the night, awed by how much we miss all the great thunderstorms back home. Finally we went back to sleep, only to be jolted awake at 4am to rattling windows and shaking walls. Figuring it was just another big ... read more

If you were staying at a four-star hotel and the fire alarm went off, and someone in their pajamas raced into your room and ordered you to get out...what would be your reaction? This is the very interesting predicament that we found ourselves in last weekend, except in this instance, Jeremy and I were the ones in our pajamas, given the authority to enter guest rooms on the ninth and tenth floors of our hotel and escort people out. It was a rather humorous night. We (miraculously) both had the evening off, and were in our room watching a movie at about 10pm. The alarm sounded, and we waited a moment or two to see if it would click right back off. No such luck. Wearily we got up and joined the exiting masses on the ... read more