Queenstown, I love you.

While the rest of the country sheltered from the rain and shivered and froze, we were basking in the glorious sunshine in Queenstown last week. The quiet, sunny, relaxed week before the madness that is the opening of the ski season.

And ok, we froze when we went outside, but the sun was out in her glory everyday, and that's what counts, right?

On most nights, as we lay in the hot spa pool at our apartment, we loved just listening to the quiet.
Central Otago has this amazing stillness on winter nights that you can't get anywhere else. The stars come out in their magnificance and there's not a breath of wind, or the constant noise around you that a city makes. When most people with any sense have tucked their cars away for the night because of the frosty, slippery slopes of Queenstown's roads, you can't beat that still night air. It's so cold that it takes your breath away, but there's a thrill in beating it. In knowing that the chill and the frost can't get you. Hot pool. Quick dash back in the night air in your bathing suit to the warmth of a fire and the indoors. (Which is probably why we all ended up with colds at the end of the week).

It was probably the last quiet week in Queenstown for awhile. There weren't too many tourists. We had some Americans staying in the apartment next to us, who we invited over one night for icecream. They were a bit younger than us and enjoying doing all the extreme sports. With the cost of everything being so outrageous we only managed the Gondola, but that was thrill enough for some of the children - and I didn't even attempt it. So I was happy to 'do' the bungy and the paraglide jump and the jet boat and the white water rafting vicariously through our adventurous neighbours.

I had great plans of doing some photoshoots of the children, and shopping, and visiting this and that, and some old friends we have in Queenstown, but actually, we were so tired, we mostly just crashed, used the pool and played games. I taught the older children how to play Monopoly, and we tackled a few jigsaws and watched some good movies.