We had no idea what we were in store for when we arrived in Queenstown, New Zealand. What an absolutely breathtaking city! Known as the adventure capital of the world, Queenstown sits on the shores of the South Island’s Lake Wakatipu, with views of the Southern Alps in the distance. In addition to adventure sports, it’s also a base for exploring the region’s vineyards, historic mining towns, and a day trip to Milford Sound. We visited in November (their spring), and this was the third city stop in our 12-day trip to New Zealand. Grab a jacket and your hiking shoes, and let’s head to Queenstown!
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Here is a sample itinerary based on our couple’s trip in November:
DAY 1: EXPLORING QUEENSTOWN AND A PRIVATE SOAKING TUB
We arrived in Queenstown (ZQN) from Blenheim via Auckland after a 4.5 hour journey. Unfortunately there weren’t any direct flights in to Queenstown, but the drive takes around 10 hours so this was still the better option for us given we had just two days in Queenstown. Our first stop was to our hotel to drop our bags and change in to our hiking clothes. We stayed at the Kamana Lakehouse, which was a stunning hotel with views to die for!
There are a number of hikes in the area (check out the All Trails app for options), but since we were pretty short on time we chose Bob’s Cove Track, which is close to 7 miles and 882 ft of elevation gain in total. Since it was late afternoon, we just did about half of the trail and turned around. It was close to Queenstown and easy for all ages, with plenty of views along the way.
Next on the agenda was heading to the Skyline Queenstown. There’s a gondola ride up to the top where you can mountain bike, grab a bite to eat, take in the views, check out the gift shop, or take a luge ride back down the slope! Tickets are a little pricey, so make sure you have some time to spend there. We didn’t do the luge ride, but we heard from others that it’s a blast!
Next we headed to the Queenstown Gardens right in the heart of Queenstown. It’s a free botanical garden that includes a short walking loop through the park. There were statues, fountains, beautiful flowers and giant trees throughout the gardens…definitely worth a stop.
We had a reservation at Nest at our hotel for dinner…it happens to be one of the best-rated restaurants in Queenstown. The bar and restaurant at Kamana Lakehouse both overlook the lake and mountains, and the food and drinks were fantastic.
For our final activity of the night, let’s talk about this hotel room…we reserved a Lakeside Luxe room with a private deck and soaking tub overlooking the lake. A bit of a splurge, but it was worth it! We rushed all day through our activities so that we’d have time to soak in the tub on our deck before the sun went down and it was everything we had imagined, and the perfect end to Day 1 in Queenstown.
DAY 2: MILFORD SOUND, FJORDLAND NATIONAL PARK, & A BUCKET-LIST FLIGHT
For Day 2, we had a very long day tour planned to Milford Sound and back…an estimated 13 hours. We booked this tour through Cheeky Kiwi Travel via Trip Advisor. The tour included transfer to and from our hotel, so we were picked up around 6:30AM to start the day (Travel Tip: Always ask the hotel the night before if they can provide a boxed breakfast when you have an early tour. Most hotels will do this for free which is such a nice perk!). There were about 10 of us on our tour in a sprinter van with a very sweet and entertaining and informative guide (I wish I could remember her name….).
It’s a 4-hour drive to get to Milford Sound (there are no direct roads there, so it makes for a long trip!), but we made several stops along the way at a coffee truck, three different lakes, glaciers and waterfalls galore in Fjordland National Park, and we even saw a Kea bird! The Kea is an Alpine Parrot only found in these areas of the South Island. A boxed lunch was provided with the tour as well. The scenery was spectacular and the stories from our guide helped pass the time quickly.
We arrived at the marina at Milford Sound around 1:30 in the afternoon, and shortly after we boarded the boat for our ride out to the ocean. The guided tour was about 1.5 hours in total, with both indoor and outdoor seating. We were fortunate to have a very clear day, with great views of the landscape, waterfalls, and even some penguins!
Following the boat tour, our guide from Cheeky Kiwi gave us two additional alternatives (vs the 4-hour bus ride) for the return trip back to Queenstown since the weather was clear…a 1-hour helicopter ride or a 45-minute small plane ride, directly over the mountains. Of course there was an additional cost for these options, but the prospect of getting back 3 hours sooner was tempting, so we went for the small 8-seat plane ride…
While we waited for our plane to arrive, the clouds started to roll in along with my nerves! There were 7 of us on the plane plus the pilot. The flight was operated by True South Flights. We flew through (close to) the mountains and were able to see things most don’t get to see, but it was not for the faint of heart! We landed at the Queenstown airport and then they took us by shuttle van back to our hotel. This was a total bucket-list flight!
Since we got back to Queenstown in time for dinner, we were able to explore the downtown a bit more. We grabbed a drink and some fried pickles at Ferg’s Bar (great bar and fun staff), and then got in line for the famous Fergburgers next door. We waited in line for about 30 minutes for our burgers and then got lucky and found a spot to sit outside…people raved about these burgers, but we didn’t think they were worth the hype. We also grabbed a couple of cookies for dessert at the Cookie Time Cookie Bar. At that point it had been a super long day so we went back to the hotel and called it a night…the next day we were heading out on a road trip to Franz Josef!
