Destination: New Zealand
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Blanket Bay
A forty-five-minute drive from Queenstown, this lodge sits in a breathtaking spot on the shore of Lake Wakatipu, looking towards the Humboldt Mountains. In the 1970s, when an American couple bought the property, it abutted a 65,000-acre working sheep station, and sheep still graze on the hillside. Back then, Tom and Pauline Tusher figured that one day they might build a cabin so they could return to fly-fish, but after Tom retired from running Levi Strauss, their simple cabin grew into a grand lodge with thirteen guest rooms. And the Tushers now spend almost a third of every year here. Soon after Blanket Bay opened, in the late ’90s, its reputation for exquisite scenery, fine service and gorgeous rooms reportedly enticed Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston to come for their honeymoon. (And having starred in A River Runs Through It, Brad must have seen plenty of pretty river spots.)
The design of the lodge, inside and out, owes less to New Zealand influences than to the Tushers’ time in the American West. Astonishing mountain views as well as an enormous...
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