Glenorchy Lake House

This is a great place to stay after hiking the Routeburn track.

This is a rented house not a hotel; and was booked through AirBnb and apart from a slightly confusing house manual, the photos say it all, and are true-to-reality: a very comfortable house; a compact but adequate kitchen in small beautiful gardens, in the stunning location of Glenorchy at the Top of the lake. The house looked over an open grassy area down to the lake and the iconic Glenorchy Boatshed. The property is adjacent (not physically attached) to the small deli-cafe, and there is an ice cream trailer just over the garden fence! There is no daytime laundry but we were very helpfully able to use the machine and dryer of the deli-cafe (which is actually confusingly in a locked room within the house with access to the cafe only during the day...) during evenings. That worked just fine. Oddly no brushes or brooms to sweep the kitchen floor, and no instructions on what to do with domestic or kitchen waste for NZ newcomers - we worked it out. Great BBQ and fabulous hot tub. Shady cool verandah on 3 sides, one private sitooterie for the master bedroom; nice sitting room for board-games of an evening. 2 very nice bathrooms; beds comfy and cool. 2 mountainbikes available free from the cafe. Sometimes we got a complimentary morning coffee. We did not meet the owner but the ladies in the cafe next door seemed to run the place and were all extremely helpful and pleasant. Although this was high season, there for no particular disruptive noise from the cafe or area outside. It was hot during our stay, and there is no air-con, so the one room upstairs, a large bedroom (not used or required) was stifling: great for storage and clothes drying. Glenorchy is a stunning, peaceful, small sprawling hamlet, about 45 mins in a car from the relatively urban Queenstown - we'd return if we could.