New Year’s recap

I’m proud to say that I’ve already ticked one of the items off my travel list, by staying in a spa room at the Duxton! Granted, this was on New Year’s Day – T was offered a last minute job doing security at Matakana Dub Conspiracy which was too good to pass up – so we celebrated the next day. A little extravagant, for sure, but he wanted to do something nice after working something like 15 hours straight. He’s been snowballing everything towards his car loan (which by my calculations should be down to $700ish – can’t wait for the next statement!) and the plan is to put the remainder after paying for the hotel towards that too.

Like a true bargain hunter, I searched a bunch of last-minute hotel deal sites and ended up  booking through ratestogo.co.nz and earned $3 towards my next booking.

But I’m starting to think that hotels never actually pay any attention to the deals advertised on second party sites. For example, when we stayed at SkyCity during Easter, our chocolate eggs weren’t in the room (part of the package) and we had to call down to get them. Neither was the PS2, but we couldn’t be bothered chasing that up. This time we were supposed to have two free house drinks waiting for us, but guess what, they weren’t. I’m not a big drinker though, and figured the odds of them being anything I’d actually want to drink were too low to bother with the hassle.

The room was AMAZING – everything we wanted and more. You can bet we made the most of the spa!

Blissful spa bath with equally blissful jets

No, it's not a freaky blue sex toy, it's a back massager

Looking down on the outdoor pool....

More of the view from our balcony

But seeing as it was kind of a last minute decision to stay here, it was a mission trying to find a place to go for dinner – so many places were closed, and we didn’t want to go somewhere where they’d be charging 15% holiday surcharge. Eventually  we settled on Chinese (one of the worst I’ve ever had :S) and settled in with Sky Movies. (Australia – ridiculously long winded. I Am Legend – heartwarming, yet heartbreaking. Caught the end of the creepy Vinyan, which looked terrible. ) And finally, the next day we had a picnic breakfast at Rocket Park where we fed pigeons and marvelled at how the sparrows deftly outsmarted them every. single. time. Yep, easily amused – that’s us.