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Town & Country
USA
March 1997

Kenya by the Lake

Kenya. It is not every day that you can wake up in a 18th century gilded bed and look out the window to see a massive hippo asleep in a bed of shrubs. Except of course, if you are staying at the Naivasha Tower, an eccentric pagoda-style house on Lake Naivasha, a 2-hour drive from Nairobi. And now that the owners of this fantastic house welcome guests for an overnight stay or will rent it out fully staffed, hippo watching at breakfast is an option for nay inspired.

The breakfast might include Italian coffee, English tea and freshly pressed pineapple juice in silver thermoses, tropical fruit salad, fresh eggs and yogurt. You might spend the morning stretched out on a colorful blanket and Oriental-style pillows, set on the lawn by one of the ever attentive butler / chefs who manage the house.  For Lunch you will enjoy such wonders as linguine al pesto or chateau briand. In the afternoon, you can venture around the lake aboard a teak Riva motorboat and admire the grand mansions that in the 30's earned  the area the nickname Happy Valley. 

Return before sunset, which is best admired from a tiny meditation room filled with enormous pillows on the on the tower's eighth floor.  From it's octagonal windows-level with the highest tree branches - the view is mystical. Dinner is served by candlelight in a beautiful mahogany paneled dining room. Open all year, the tower has four double bedrooms.