A Cozy Apartment in Hamilton
New Zealand Travelog #35
Hamilton, NZ - Thu, 18 Apr 2024, 10pm
Tonight we're staying in Hamilton. Actually we're staying here tomorrow night, too. That's right: after several nights of hopscotching across New Zealand with one-night stands in hotels, we're back to staying multiple nights at a time in one place. "Multiple" is still only two nights, but hey, that's twice as much as one. 😂
Hamilton's a bigger city than any we've stayed in so far, and there were a lot of hotels to choose from here. ...A lot of hotels with crummy ratings! It seems like hotels on the downtown strip were largely built decades ago and haven't been kept up well. Possibly that's because there isn't resort town money coming in like with the posher hotels we drove past in Taupo and Rotorua. Anyway, given the wealth of poor choices we opted to stay away from the center of town in a small property of apartment-like rooms.
Ours is a one-bedroom apartment. The bedroom is separate from the living room/dining room combination area, which also has a single bed with a pull-out bed. Unlike the apartment-like room we had the other night in the middle of nowhere ( the one with hot springs and bug swatting), this one is modern; no 1930s aesthetics or technology here.
This apartment is furnished and advertised as accommodating four people... but it doesn't really. There isn't enough space. The kitchen (photo above) is fully equipped but is tight. There's no space there to keep groceries. Like, we had just two small bags of groceries, and the only place to put them on the counter is to either side of the stove top or in the sink's drying pan. Take anything out and it risks being splashed or burned. Elsewhere in the apartment there's little storage for luggage or clothes. It looks like we'll be using the spare bed as a storage shelf.
But still, it's nice to have the room to spread out with a small dinette table in a room separate from the bedroom. This evening we bought food at a nearby Indian takeaway and ate it back in the room. We also bought some groceries for breakfasts the next two days. That'll hopefully be healthier and less expensive than buying breakfast in gas station convenience stores.
Hamilton, NZ - Thu, 18 Apr 2024, 10pm
Tonight we're staying in Hamilton. Actually we're staying here tomorrow night, too. That's right: after several nights of hopscotching across New Zealand with one-night stands in hotels, we're back to staying multiple nights at a time in one place. "Multiple" is still only two nights, but hey, that's twice as much as one. 😂
Hamilton's a bigger city than any we've stayed in so far, and there were a lot of hotels to choose from here. ...A lot of hotels with crummy ratings! It seems like hotels on the downtown strip were largely built decades ago and haven't been kept up well. Possibly that's because there isn't resort town money coming in like with the posher hotels we drove past in Taupo and Rotorua. Anyway, given the wealth of poor choices we opted to stay away from the center of town in a small property of apartment-like rooms.
Ours is a one-bedroom apartment. The bedroom is separate from the living room/dining room combination area, which also has a single bed with a pull-out bed. Unlike the apartment-like room we had the other night in the middle of nowhere ( the one with hot springs and bug swatting), this one is modern; no 1930s aesthetics or technology here.
This apartment is furnished and advertised as accommodating four people... but it doesn't really. There isn't enough space. The kitchen (photo above) is fully equipped but is tight. There's no space there to keep groceries. Like, we had just two small bags of groceries, and the only place to put them on the counter is to either side of the stove top or in the sink's drying pan. Take anything out and it risks being splashed or burned. Elsewhere in the apartment there's little storage for luggage or clothes. It looks like we'll be using the spare bed as a storage shelf.
But still, it's nice to have the room to spread out with a small dinette table in a room separate from the bedroom. This evening we bought food at a nearby Indian takeaway and ate it back in the room. We also bought some groceries for breakfasts the next two days. That'll hopefully be healthier and less expensive than buying breakfast in gas station convenience stores.