After breakfast at the lodge we headed to Te Anau--our home base for the next couple of days and our launching point for our overnight cruise in Doubtful Sound. Again, we had another lovely drive through more amazing valleys. A few miles outside of Queenstown we accidentally stumbled upon Amisfield Winery--the winery that made the very delicious Hayes Lake Sauvignon Blanc that we had with dinner the night before. We popped in for a brief tasting and picked up a couple bottles. The winery was beautiful--amazing architecture, great looking restaurant and a bocci ball court. When the snooty lady working wasn't looking down her nose she informed us that they'd won some very prestigious design awards amongst all their other grand accomplishments.
We completely missed our turnoff to Te Anau because we were freaking out over the sheer magnificence that is Queenstown. Queenstown sits on beautiful lake Wakatipu and is surrounded by the most breathtaking mountains we have ever seen. They are very appropriately named The Remarkables and yes, it never gets old talking about how very "remarkable" they really are. We took a brief drive though town to get a preview of what we would see later in the week when we returned for two days. In the meantime, we must have pulled over to photograph the Remarkables and the lake at least ten times. We immediately began to figure out if, how, and when we could move there. Once we composed ourselves enough to continue the drive, we backtracked to the Te Anau turn off and wondered whether we had booked enough time in Queenstown.
We arrived to find our B&B perfect! The Croft is a small working sheep ranch with two private cottages (one blue and one green) and the main house. Our cottage overlooked the garden, farm, lake, and mountains. We decided to check out the sleepy little town and pick up some wine and cheese to enjoy on our porch. A cute little squatty dog joined us and visited several times over the next two days. He liked to sit right up against our sliding glass door with his back to us...I guess he liked the view too.
For dinner we went back to town to the Red Hill Cafe. It looked like a little shack from the outside but was an amazing bar and restaurant on the inside. We shared a manukau smoked salmon dish. When we were leaving we noticed a bunch of signed Lord of the Rings memorabilia. Apparently, much of the crew had dined there on several occasions.
We completely missed our turnoff to Te Anau because we were freaking out over the sheer magnificence that is Queenstown. Queenstown sits on beautiful lake Wakatipu and is surrounded by the most breathtaking mountains we have ever seen. They are very appropriately named The Remarkables and yes, it never gets old talking about how very "remarkable" they really are. We took a brief drive though town to get a preview of what we would see later in the week when we returned for two days. In the meantime, we must have pulled over to photograph the Remarkables and the lake at least ten times. We immediately began to figure out if, how, and when we could move there. Once we composed ourselves enough to continue the drive, we backtracked to the Te Anau turn off and wondered whether we had booked enough time in Queenstown.
We arrived to find our B&B perfect! The Croft is a small working sheep ranch with two private cottages (one blue and one green) and the main house. Our cottage overlooked the garden, farm, lake, and mountains. We decided to check out the sleepy little town and pick up some wine and cheese to enjoy on our porch. A cute little squatty dog joined us and visited several times over the next two days. He liked to sit right up against our sliding glass door with his back to us...I guess he liked the view too.
For dinner we went back to town to the Red Hill Cafe. It looked like a little shack from the outside but was an amazing bar and restaurant on the inside. We shared a manukau smoked salmon dish. When we were leaving we noticed a bunch of signed Lord of the Rings memorabilia. Apparently, much of the crew had dined there on several occasions.
No comments:
Post a Comment