Monday, April 23, 2007

Greetings from New Zealand

I am having a great time on my vacation, and will have lots of money-related tidbits to blog about later, but for now, I will just tell you that I am at an internet kiosk where I have paid NZ$4.00 for 16 minutes of usage. The kiosk is located in a hotel in Mt. Cook Village called The Hermitage, where rooms start at NZ$560! Am I actually staying in one of these rooms? Yes! Did I pay $560 for it? No! We got a night here for FREE, via a connection my companion managed to exploit. It's a fabulous spot-- our room has a gigantic picture window looking out at snow-capped mountains that feel like they're about a foot away. The only catch is that there is hardly anyplace to eat in this town, so we had dinner in one of the hotel restaurants last night-- the casual buffet-style restaurant where dinner is NZ$51.50 per person! That includes tax but not wine, so add another $24 for 3 glasses of a lovely Hawkes Bay Sauvignon Blanc. If we'd eaten in the a la carte restaurant, main courses would have started at about $30, so we could have done worse. The New Zealand dollar is really strong right now, but still, by New York standards, things aren't too expensive here... except for a $4 bagel I had in Christchurch.
Time's running out... more later!

6 comments:

Bitty said...

Happy vacation, Madame X! Thanks for thinking of us.

Dawn said...

Good to hear from you!
4NZD ~ 2.97USD for 16 minutes, that's still a lot!

And 51.50NZD ~ 38.35USD for a meal - that is still quite a bit, but a little better.

I would love to see NZ, my brother hitchhiked around there for 8 months.

Chance said...

Ah...you lucky, lucky person! I'm seething with envy :)
Enjoy!

Rich Minx said...

Hi Madame X,

I'm a New Zealander living in New York, so I'll be interested to hear what you think of my home country. Mt Cook is very beautiful, although prices there are not really indicative of NZ as a whole :)

Anonymous said...

What ... no FREE wifi? :-)

Have a great vacation!

L. Marie Joseph said...

Nice to see we are worth the 16 minutes

Have more fun on your vacation