Queenstown

We had arrived at Queenstown, which in my book had a certain reputation, party city no 1 in New Zealand. I wasn't expecting much from the city earlier on, but after some pretty tough hikes and feet nearly falling apart, I probably could use a few days being lazy. We had sent the crazy Canadian on foot from Wanaka to Queenstown, while we instead ended up on the beach.
Well, a lake doesn't really have a beach I guess, but at least it felt like it. Here the city council had no problem with people drinking on the beach, but I was a bit surprised to see that people were drinking from bottles, isn't that a little stupid?
The lake had super clear water, kind of strange to look at because all the facilities in the lake around the wharf is what it would be in an ocean.
They had the jet power boats, parasailing, steam river boat, jetski and so on, lots of different ways to spend the day. The attitude towards life in this city or New Zealand as a whole, is a lot more relaxed than what I know from the US. Drinking on the beach is ok, sailing around the lake in a home built vessel with an outboard engine is fine, it just seems like people live life here without too much control, which is nice!

Lots of restaurants, not exactly aiming at the poor backpackers, but more expensive without being upscale, how to justify that? There seems to be a lot of wealthy tourists staying at the hostels too, getting a private room there is probably a lot cheaper than a hotel room
This one day we were on the beach and I suddenly got hungry and thirsty. Instead of walking the 15 minutes to the supermarket and buy some cheap stuff, I chose to visit the restaurant on the beach for a quick snack. I ordered a steak sandwich thinking it would be something like what you find at Quiznos or Subway, but here I got a slice of bread with a steak on it - awesome. This is going to be my reference for steak sandwich from now on!
At night this friendly and quiet little city/village turns into a crazy party place for backpackers from all over the world. Go to the bar and you will find people from more countries than you actually know. People start out very civilized with a glass of wine or a beer, hours later the effect of alcohol starts showing... on some, haha

The hostel were very different in tolerance levels. The one we stayed on in Queenstown was occupied by a lot of people from the Kiwi Experience bus. They have a tendency to sleep with an alcohol bottle in their bed, so this hostel did not forbid drinking in the rooms like many of the other hostels

The result of that was not too difficult to see, the entire room was flooded with bottles, underwear, shoes and what not. On the other hand, I had already stayed in one of the no-drinks-in-the-room places, and that was so boring.

Queenstown is a mixture of a ski-village, a teenage party town and a very touristic beach resort area. It has its charm, but at the same time not very much like the rest of New Zealand that I have experienced. It is definitely a place people can go to be social for a few days. Here one day takes the other if partying and I think there is so much else to do and see in New Zealand instead, so limit this place to a few days only and get out of there, it is like a black hole