Weekenders: Rolf’s Place

I have no immediate long term travel plans coming up and so for the next few months I will try to do a series  of weekender trips ranging from day adventures to 1 or 2 night trips. These posts will be much shorter and will be mainly Kenyan based as its my current location. Even before I learned that this weekend was going to be an extended long weekend I had already envisioned myself leaving the city for some much needed R&R. I have been aching to go explore Champagne Ridge and had even booked one of the lovely houses there for the weekend. Well we got double booked and lost the booking till October and hence had to get a plan B pretty fast. Till October, Champagne Ridge is on hold and hence in the spirit of staying in the same direction we opted to head to Rolf’s Place.

Rolf’s Place is located only an hour away from Nairobi making it a really accessible place to give you the feel of vacation mode. It is a medieval fortress style mansion built on the edge of a cliff and is accessed by a suspended bridge. As soon as you pack you car you could see the mansion across the valley with monkeys and baboons running around. We were wise to start our day early and avoid the afternoon crowds.

We had read about the food taking ages to be served and hence opted to order our food and then head out to explore the grounds and have some time to swim and soak in the very much needed sun. The mansion itself is uniquely decorated and incorporates up-cycling with the ostrich egg chandelier and stained glasses and rich earthy tones of red, orange, brown and mahogany. It combines a feel of your feel at home vibe with that of a African inspired vacation home. The patio doubles up as lounge and restaurant and gives you great views of the Nairobi National Park in the distance and a calm river at the bottom of the valley where the monkeys and baboons go wild.

We did spend a good amount of time at the pool which had perfect location with the beautiful bougainvillea trees on site, the Nairobi National park in the not too far distance and the Nairobi Skyline in the horizon. It was a brilliant day to hang out in the pool and that we had the pool to ourselves was a great plus. The pool bar offers their own “Nyama Choma” BBQ style meats menu but you can also have dishes from the main restaurant served there. We however opted to focus on getting some sun before heading back to the mansion for lunch.

About 2 hour later we headed back to the mansion where we stuffed ourselves with delicious food. the portions for the main dishes are pretty large and we were glad we had ordered couple starters and 1 main dish to share. The food was pretty good and the menu does offer some German staples that may be hard to get in Kenya. We had planned on getting the apple strudel for dessert but were to stuffed to eat more.

We chilled some more to let the food settle and then passed by Masai Lodge which is right next door for a late afternoon Amarula drink before heading back home. Masai Lodge has a more proper hotel feel to it and had way more people, here the lawns were perfectly manicured and everything felt perfected. I generally prefer places with a rustic/ imperfect/ raw vibe to it like Rolfs place but it was nice to see a place like Masai Lodge out of the city and pretty full.

It was a lovely day out and really made us feel on full on vacation mode. We ended the day at Level 8  – Best Western Roof Top for a lovely sunset and daiquiris. With this am all set for my 4 day week and look forward to more exciting weekends.

Stay Happy

~Lea~

For more adventures with me