Shakespeare House

Here are the few reasons why I strongly suggested you find another option. It feels like it was a old motel being renovated. The indoor living room was very cold in april and furniture quit outdated. The bathroom is extremely small, can barley move and extremely cold, no heating. The windows? I had a small one with natural light and a bigger one facing the indoor living room so no natural light at all. The walls are paper thin, i heard everything that was going on in the bedroom next time. As for their “rules kitchen “ be aware to read them if u go there. My bad: i did not. The kitchen can only be used by guests from 11am til 8pm. That’s it. I wasn’t aware tho that when it’s breakfast time which is 7am til 8h30am, even if the kitchen is open, you are NOT allowed to make yourself something you would like to eat either eggs or anything. You eat whatever is there which isn’t much: canned fruits, i didn’t see anything fresh, bread, a muffin cake style and cereal and yogurt. I learned it the hard way by misunderstanding this aspect of breakfast and not computerizing in my brain that breakfast ends at 8h30 and i showed up at 8h10-15 and asking to the old lady doing the dishes if i could get 2 slices of bread as it was 8h35 so i was apparently 5 minutes late. I will pass on how rude this old lady was towards me, enough that i asked for a refund for the 2 nights i had left there and i left. There is a way to interact with guests that travel across the world to come visit NZ like i did. Of course as a solo female traveller i stood up for myself and defended myself. I no longer felt safe and at peace so i left. I had never seen anywhere in the world breakfast time for 1h30 with no flexibility when you are dealing with travellers. So definitely i recommend my felllow travellers to look for a better option…

This B&B is located a good 10 minute walk from the Town Centre and a couple of minutes from Lake Te Anau. We found the owners very keen to share their local knowledge and routes to other areas of Southland. Adequate continental breakfast, with a cooked option available at a daily extra cost of $15. Our room was comfortable.

It’s a pleasant enough location but maybe a little far to walk into town easily. It was also very clean. That’s the best I can say though. The narrow ground further bedroom (and ours was one of a few that were similarly positioned) had a small exterior window, but the light and any view were obscured by a large bush. This made the room very gloomy and dark. Two other opaque windows were heavily frosted and let in some light from a wide covered corridor that had some seating. The corridor was also being used as an area to dry bed linen when we arrived. There was insufficient lighting in the bedroom to read anything printed. The ambience of our bedroom was dark, dingy and depressing. It was, by far, the worst place we’d stayed in during our two week holiday in South Island. The bed was very soft, felt old and was most unsupportive. Water pressure in the tiny shower/wc room basin was very poor, which didn’t help the ridiculously long cold leg for the hot water to come through. The shower unit was an unusual one with a metal floor and a thin flexible plastic door that seemed to be on a vertical roller. Cheap and nasty, but at least the ancient looking shower worked. I cannot imagine anyone wanting to spend any more time in the bedroom than absolutely necessary. The continental breakfast was a parsimonious lacklustre offering which finished at 8.30 - never had such an early cut-off before. Obviously done to suit the owners, not the paying guests. I cannot understand why the facility had such good reviews. Maybe all the reviewers stayed in the only front bedroom that had a view, a decent amount of natural light and looked ok. In all, we could never recommend this place other than as a low budget B&B, but it was too expensive to be budget accommodation.

We've stayed here several times over the years. The owners are very knowledgeable about the area. Our room was large and airy. Noise from other rooms was a problem with giggling girls late at night. There is a guest refrigerator which was nice to have and we were able to do laundry. Breakfast could be better. You have to pay extra for anything cooked so there was little protein available. Some boiled eggs would have been nice, as well as some decaf coffee. We could have used some body lotion, too. We'll stay here again.