I love hanging out with the husband and kidlets. Love love love it. Live for it even. BUT sometimes I just need a few moments in time where I can sit back and shirk life’s responsibilities.
Enter the girls’ weekend.
Sure, I might spend most of the weekend talking about the ones I love most but knowing someone else is at home doing the hard yards almost makes me feel like I don’t have a care in the world. I wine it up with the lovelies, dance in my PJs to all my old favourite chick anthems and leave my troubles behind.
The girls and I have been on quite a few NZ weekends away over the years. We only catch up once a year now so we make it good and with good planning, travelling across the Tasman from Australia doesn’t cost much at all these days. Here are some of our favourite NZ destinations.
Marlborough Region
It’s wine country; what’s not girls’ weekend about that? This area is packed to the brim with awesome daytime activities like swimming with dolphins, whale watching, horse riding, canoeing and even hunting if packing a rifle floats your boat but…ummm…we didn’t do any.
So if your girls group is a tad more active than ours then at least you won’t be disappointed as there is more than enough stuff to do. Loads and loads of it. We decided wine tasting, gossip and yummy food while looking over stunning scenery was about all we needed on our visit and we weren’t sorry. Besides, I have kids. My life is already active.
Wellington
Sometimes only the big city will do and in NZ, we love the capital. We did our research and went to this fancy pants restaurant (divine!) on our stay. Food is actually of a very high standard here in general so if you want to wing it just head down to Cuba Street or Courtenay Place and pick a restaurant. You can’t go too wrong. If you need a shorter list than that then ask the staff at the hotel. They’ll be able to give you a shortlist and you can go from there. We also got our culture on and visited the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa (FREE) and of course, did a spot of shopping.
Why to the big city if you aren’t going to do some shopping? Am I right? Of course I’m right. Apparently Wellington never used to be that cool but let me tell you, they have done a fabulous job of shooshing it up. It is funky and edgy and, well, really quite cool.
Rotorua
Errrrr did someone say hot springs? We chose this location purely because of them and OMG YAY just about sums it up. We made this one a real pamper weekend so it was mostly hot springs and time at the spa. There was quite a bit of indulgence going on during the day. We went out on the first night which was super fun. You might (well OK maybe it’s just me) think of Rotorua as this teeny little place so far north it is almost not NZ anymore but it has quite the buzzing little nightlife. But then it is a resort town so perhaps it shouldn’t be so surprising. I was obviously just out of the loop. So, lots of night time fun, lots of daytime fun and also some pure indulgence.
Kristy Alexander is a freelance travel writer who loves nothing more than a weekend getaway with the girls. When she’s on a girls shopping trip in NZ she loves to stay at one of the many luxury hotels in Wellington for the ultimate treat.
