Queenstown Gardens

Set on its own tongue of land framing Queenstown Bay, this pretty park is the perfect city escape right within the city. Laid out in 1876, it features an 18-‘hole’ frisbee golf course, an ice-skating rink, skate park, lawn-bowls club, tennis courts, mature exotic trees including large sequoias and some fab monkey puzzles by the rotunda and a rose garden. To stroll a loop around the peninsula and gardens should take about 30 minutes.

Gibbston Valley

The area’s oldest commercial winery is such a large complex it looks impersonal, but offers the very personal touch of tours of the winery and NZ’s largest wine cave. It also has a variety of tastings, along with a restaurant, cheesery and bike hire for the Rabbit Ridge Bike Resort or Gibbston River Trail. In summertime, large concerts are held on the grounds here.

Kiwi Birdlife Park

This huge park of area around two hectares is home to 10,000 native plants, tuatara and scores of birds, including kiwi, kea, NZ falcons, parakeets and extremely rare black stilts. Stroll around the aviaries, watch the conservation show and tiptoe quietly into the darkened kiwi houses. Kiwi feedings take place five times a day.