Grassmere Lodge a.k.a my favorite place so far
Trip Start
Dec 29, 2007
1
15
16
Trip End
Mar 03, 2008
Where I stayed
Arthurs Pass, New Zealand
Sunday, February 17, 2008
Anyways, we took a lovely train ride where we got off at Cass...location 1. NO JOKE. One person lives there, so you can imagine how lovely the train stop was! But we got picked up and driven to Grassmere lodge. It is here where we will be spending the next five days. Let me begin by describing this place with my favorite new word, AMAZING. We are staying in a house where in my room there is a beautiful porch with a view of the mountains and horses and fields. Every room has fireplaces, I have a Jacuzzi tub and they place out fruit and give you a HEATED bed at night. I mean COME ON, im so warm here I could hibernate forever.
Anything you can imagine you want to do involving nature you can do here. There is hiking, horseback riding, canoeing, golden retrievers you can take on walks, a nice outdoor pool, a library, large selection of DVDs, tours of the sheep farm (we are going to see how dogs round up the sheep). So far we have gone horseback riding which is so much harder then it looks. I haven't done it since I was like ten, so I was pretty rusty. And of course Jen, the one who broke her arm horseback riding when she was young, was the one who fell of the horse (no worries, shes unharmed). But the kids were great on the horses, George had a bit of a hard time controlling his and it lead us all into a large prickly bush area where my legs got torn up. But other then that and me getting burnt due to forgetting to put on sun block, it was a very good time. I am a very big fan of the dogs you can take on walks here. I love big dogs so being able to play with one again is nice.
Here at Grassmere lunch and breakfast are served in the lounge area, and then dinner is served in the main house. This consist of drinks and appetizers served in the library and then dinner at your table which is mulit-course. So you can imagine how much us (a family with four kids) sticks out here! The food is unfairly good here. All gourmet, For some reason the kids are starting to get picky though. They used to eat anything and now all they really want is plain pasta. Most likely they are just getting worn out of traveling and eating out. But they are never picky about the dessert. I have started to resort to using cookies and dessert as bribes to get them to sit still for their lessons.
I also found out how to get George to be on my side. I took a bath in the Orange Mango bath soaps and then used all the smelly shampoos and whatnot and after that George INSISTED on sitting by me the whole night. He kept saying "Leah, you smell good". Must have washed off the cooties!
The rest of the days at Grasmere were spent going on hikes, kayaking, exploring the property, school work (of course) and playing with the dogs, oh and EATING of course.
Lots of very good gourmet food here. This is one of those places where in-between dishes you get sorbet to clean your palette for the next dish. The kids get to special order stuff (like pineapple pizza) from the chef.
We went on a great hike the other day where at the end we wanted to leave a part of us in New Zealand forever, so we all cut off a bit of hair and dug it into the ground. Then we did a "Haka" dance which is a dance the Maori's do here (the native people). The kids of course got a kick out of it.
Overall Grasmere was incredible. Beautiful surroundings and very peaceful. You know its a nice place if you never have to lock your doors!
