End of our trip

Here are a couple of pictures from our last day in New Zealand. We drove back from Queenstown to Christchurch (about a 6 1/2 hour drive) along the east coast (we originally drove down on the west coast). We stopped a few times for pretty scenery...
The funniest part of the whole trip was the hotel we stayed in that night in Christchurch. We found it online and since we were only going to be there for a few hours (had to leave at 4:30am to get to the airport) we thought we'd save some money and go for the cheaper hotel. Plus this one looked really nice - it's brand new and modern, and it got good reviews from a lot of people who had stayed there. The reason, the internet said, it was so cheap is because the rooms are very small...

This is the entire room! I am literally standing in the doorway to the room. As you can see, the bed is surrounded by walls on 3 sides, so you can't walk around it (at the foot end of the bed there is a little desk). There wasn't even room to open our suitcases unless they were on the bed, and then they had to be stored underneath the bed (as you can see, the bed is elevated off the floor just for this reason). I didn't take a picture of the bathroom, but it was the exact replica of an airplane toilet - with the metal floor and everything! The bathroom door wasn't even a normal door that opens and closes, it was a sliding door because there was nowhere for the door to open into the room or bathroom. It was hilarious. Luckily, we were only going to be there for a few hours - so we went out to dinner and came back and went straight to bed. And it was very new and modern.

The other thing I have to mention, because I know that everyone likes to complain about gasoline prices - the cost of gas in New Zealand is $8.71 per gallon! We spent about $300 on gas in the 4 days we were there!

I am not complaining though - we had absolutely the best trip and I wouldn't trade any of it! I hope you've liked the pictures :)