What's the best way to spend one day in Queenstown, New Zealand?

Two words. FERG BURGER. The most incredible burgers you will ever have in your life. Go into Queenstown town, it's fairly easy to find :)

Queenstown offers a tremendous range of different activities, from very active and physically challenging to relaxing and sedentary. No matter what you want to see or do, you'll find plenty to enjoy in the Queenstown area. The following list represents activities that we have on our own personal 'must do' list, and which other people have generally found to be high quality experiences, too. Use this as a suggested starting point for planning your own time. Day Tour to Milford Sound This is high on everyone's list of 'must do' activities. You travel, via Te Anau, and along an incredibly beautiful road to Milford Sound where you then go on a cruise out to the Tasman Sea and back in again before returning back to Queenstown. But, as wonderful as it is, the day tour from Queenstown, when traveling by coach, makes for a long day - as much as 14 hours from when you start the tour to when you finish the tour. For that reason, some people choose to fly by small plane one way or both ways between Queenstown and Milford Sound. We'd recommend you travel by coach to Milford Sound and then fly back by plane after your cruise on Milford Sound. The coach drive to Milford Sound tends to be well narrated and with several stops along the way; the coach drive back tends to be less interesting.

Milford from Queenstown is a massive day, I know they sell it to lots of people but it is five hours each way in the bus, and the cruise you will be on is one of the very busy, big boat middle of the day ones; not ideal. One way round this is to fly there and back which isn't much more expensive than the bus and will get you there in half an hour over fantastic scenery (although there is fantastic scenery in the last 90 minutes of the bus trip). This will give you a bit more time. Christchurch has a gondola too with views over the Lyttleton crater. You can see quite a lot of the Queenstown scenery as you drive in and out. The town itself has nothing to see apart from the lake, it's all about the surrounds. There are other places in NZ where you can bungy although Queenstown has the highest one. It is usually about three hours from the pickup point, including the 30 seconds of the jump itself, so as a value-for-time it is one of the worst things you can do. There are better jet boat rides than Shotover; the Dart River valley jet is wonderful for scenery but I don't think you can fit that in as well as the Milford flight. One option is just to go out to the Shotover launch site (on the road to Arrowtown) where you can see the start of the canyon and some of the boat stunts, for free. Then drive on into Arrowtown and have a look round; a walk round the Chinese settlement will also give you some local history. That's about all you can fit in. There is lots of fantastic walking around Queenstown but you just don't have time.