TV, hotels, and reception desks.

Television

One of the things Katie and I noticed pretty early is that there are fewer TV channels than one would expect in hotels and B&B's here. Our first hotel in Auckland, the Hotel DeBrett, is rated the #1 hotel in the city. Also, they had somewhere around 7 channels on TV. That is not an exaggeration. The channels went something like: TV2, TV3, sports, sports, Maori TV, news, sports. In several other hotels, the selections were similar. We even remember several places where we had 12-15 channels, and three were repeat channels but an hour behind (Aussie time). On the one hand, you don't really go on vacation to watch TV in your hotel (or at least, one probably shouldn't?). On the other, everyone likes to unwind at the end of the night, especially on vacation! It made us really appreciate our television selection in the US. I can't wait to get back to Vanderpump Rules.

The other thing about TV in New Zealand: everyone was into The Bachelor New Zealand, including us. The vast majority of TV there seemed to be sports, followed by overseas programming (BBC, US channels, etc.). But TV3 was an internal national network, and they are all about The Bachelor NZ. I'm sad that we don't get it here!

Reception desks and accommodation check-in

I have never visited a place where hotel check-in was not 24 hours. Ever. Or, if I did, I didn't know it. But from the small B&B's to the nice hotels, almost every place we stayed had a last-call check-in time. On more than one occasion we had to forego side quests so we could make it to check-in before, say, 7:30 or 8 in the evening. Our very first hotel actually advertised that they have 24-hour check-in, which I found very confusing. As the trip went on, I appreciated it much more.