Sound the alphorn: the alpine summer is officially back. 2025 marked the third consecutive year that Switzerland broke tourism records between May and October, with the number of overnight stays topping 25 million for the first time according to figures released in December by the Swiss Federal Statistical Office. Now, with the winter’s snow a distant memory, all signs point to the sunshine months of 2026 being yet another record-breaker.

The boom has been attributed to a number of factors: the mountains offering clear-aired respite from the scorching heatwaves and wildfires that are ever more present at sea level; the appeal to both those seeking real rest and relaxation, and adventurous active types; and the simple fact that more and more hotels now open for a full summer season.

One such hotel is Grand Hotel Belvedere, a towering turn-of-the-century grande dame in two parts — revitalised in 2024 by French hotel group Beaumier — that straddles a prime panoramic slope in the town of Wengen, high in the Bernese Alps. And it might just offer the platonic ideal of the alpine summer.

First off, that thing they say about the journey being just as important as the destination? In Wengen it’s never been truer. The car-free town is only accessible via a cog-wheel train that cranks skywards from Lauterbrunnen, itself best reached by a spectacularly scenic lake-skirting train ride from Zurich. When you exit, you’re welcome to take the leisurely stroll ever higher through the postcard-pretty town centre on foot, but the awaiting Beaumier-branded Jumbolino (a sort of chic, electric milk float) makes the ascent with suitcases that much easier.

Inside, the lobby is rich in restored wooden detailing, its soft seating areas inviting you to sit and marvel at the valley views beyond. The bedrooms are spacious, stylish and, in my case, particularly panoramic. Lorenz Maurer, the tall, stylish and affable general manager shows me what keeps things ticking behind-the-scenes, including a series of high-tech wood-chip heaters to provide hotel-wide warmth. Outside, though, the sun is providing plenty of that, the Sonnenbad terrace’s yellow umbrellas standing tall like buttercups among the sweeping green expanse. ‘We’re lovers of the mountain all year round,’ Maurer says. ‘But summer is definitely becoming our biggest season.’

This is the first full one since the installation of Belvedere’s concrete spa and pool which juts out from the base of the higher building and blends into the surroundings ‘like a brutalist relic that nature has gradually reclaimed,’ to quote architect Valéry Clavien. After a sublime full-body massage with alpine-fresh Suzanne Kaufmann products, I take to the indoor-outdoor pool as the sun beats down and the roar of an unsighted jet plane echoes around the valley. I conclude there can be few better spots to gaze up at the iconic Jungfrau peak.

It’s said J. R. R. Tolkien based idyllic scenes of Middle Earth on hikes he took in these valleys, and about 100 years before that, German composer Felix Mendelssohn was moved enough to write symphonies inspired by them (‘Of all the countries I know, this is the most beautiful,’ he said). Today the most picturesque trail bears his name, but if you choose to head in any direction you’re unlikely to be disappointed, with routes that take you through forests, past grazing livestock and picturesque farms, around the town’s outskirts and into the valley’s basin. Hop back on the train and you can make your way back down to the invitingly turquoise lakes you passed on arrival. Part of what makes Wengen such a good base is that it can satisfy both the casual stroller and the hardened hiker (and, indeed, those who prefer such things were done on two wheels) — plus you don’t have to watch out for cars. The buzzy terrace at the rustic Da Sina steakhouse and the lowkey local pub vibes of the garishly signed Crystal Bar make for nice pit stops on your return leg, but an aperitivo at one of Belvedere’s bars or out on the terrace takes some beating, particularly at golden hour as the surrounding peaks are painted bright orange and pastel pink before the starry night sky takes over.

Dining here also takes its cues from what you can see around you. English chef Will Gordon relies on seasonal produce sourced within a 100-kilometre radius with plenty picked on the doorstep. Where in winter that might lean towards heavy, hearty, warming dishes to soothe weary skiers, the spring/summer menus are light, fresh and flavourful — alpine salmon, cured beetroot, charcuterie and house-made chutneys. The locally made Riesling is worth special mention too.

A steam, a sauna, a bask in the sun, another stroll, another Riesling — summer up here is just as uncomplicated as summer at sea level yet it feels so much more…cleansing. Imagining Wengen deep in snow, thronged by the crowds for its annual Lauberhorn downhill ski races, seems almost impossible. Besides, you’d miss too much going at those speeds… this is a place to slow down.

Rooms at Grand Hotel Belvedere start from £475 per night.

The writer’s transport was provided by Travel Switzerland who guarantee seamless connections by train, bus, boat or mountain railway. Click here to buy your Swiss Travel Pass, point-to-point tickets or plan the Grand Train Tour of Switzerland.

Casa Bonavita is very much a family affair — a hotel that feels like a home, but that you wouldn’t dare to call ‘a home from home’ — unless you happen to live in an immaculately decorated, 18th century Maltese palazzo.

The owners are Suzanne and Christopher Sharp, founders of The Rug Company, and before Bonavita opened as a hotel, it operated as their occasional home. Their daughter Sophie's pottery and son Jamie's antiques fill the space.

There were a myriad things to consider when they set about turning a home into a hotel, including planning for everyone taking a shower simultaneously. However, the couple’s flair for interior design and decor has always been innate. ‘Suzanne has the ability to create interiors which are both inspiring and comfortable, and there were constant discussions about… how to get the balance between functionality and design,’ says Christopher. Even when Bonavita is fully booked, there are quiet corners to escape to — with an expertly mixed negroni.

A huge number of craftspeople and artists were involved in the six-year project, but a consistent vision and the couple’s collection of fabrics, furniture, paintings and lighting, collected over the years, helped pull everything together. ‘In many ways, Casa Bonavita is an accumulation of a lifetime of visual memories, brought together to create a place that feels familiar, lived-in and deeply personal,’ says Christopher.

Textiles and artisanal works sourced from throughout the Mediterranean are complemented by antique treasures including a Genoese cabinet, packed with ceramics. One of the dining room’s walls is hung with joyfully-hued art, while a botanical mural by Italian artists Alfonso Orombelli and Luna Aulehla Greppi covers the other.

The Valletta Bar’s walls have not been left behind and are enveloped in a bespoke, hand-painted vista of 17th-century Valletta, by de Gournay. The kitchen is tiled in Sicilian slabs and the grand entrance hall boasts a frescoed ceiling.

The seven bedrooms and suites in the original house (Suzanne and Christopher bought it 15 years ago before purchasing the neighbouring house and land) share high ceilings, but are all unique in design. Suite 5 is located in the former chapel and comes with a private terrace and a statement bathroom featuring a domed ceiling and marble bath. Suite 4’s bathroom is equally impressive with its floral fresco framing the bathtub.

There are five further bedrooms and suites in the Dower House, which can be booked on an exclusive-use basis. This newly built structure fits seamlessly with the existing buildings, accessed via the verdant garden. The building's courtyard centrepiece is a swimming pool atop a subterranean spa. There are more rooms in the former stables and a soon-to-open, stand-alone suite (The Folly) whose lucky guests will be able to brag about their private garden, plunge pool and one-of-kind oval-shaped bedroom.

The ceramics — from monogrammed red dinnerware to statement lamps and urns bursting with fresh flowers — are all painstakingly made, 500 metres away at Villa Bologna, a historic estate that has been home to a pottery studio since 1920.

Back in 2020, Sophie took over the running of the studio and reinstated archival designs. Each piece has a charming story behind it, but few can beat her own tale of growing up with Villa Bologna ceramics filling her home and one day not only owning the business, but supplying her parent’s hotel in the same village.

Art bleeds into the outdoor spaces of Casa Bonavita, too. Between the honey-hued buildings and the palm-and-bougainvillea-framed pool, a vast garden unfurls, studded with ancient columns, statues and fountains.

Christopher nurtured the garden himself: ‘The vision was to create a series of secluded spaces through generous, layered planting, allowing the garden to remain on the edge of wildness while still having structure.’

Plants were chosen with the climate and seasons in mind so that there is something beautiful to look at year round. Once again, this acute sense of care lends itself to a family home; Christopher was dead-heading geraniums when I spoke to him — not your typical proprietor.

Red Savannah can organise four night stays at Casa Bonavita from £2,195 per person, on a bed and breakfast basis. The price includes private airport transfers from and to Malta airport, and return economy flights from London Heathrow to Malta (including a checked bag).

The clue’s in the name: Palm Beach. There are palm trees and a long strip of beach. There’s also bright-pink bougainvillea on every house, jasmine in the air, singing mockingbirds competing with the gentle purr of the odd Rolls-Royce and roads with names such as Hibiscus Avenue and Coral Lane (Gulfstream Road, too, which is appropriately Palm Beach because almost everyone here owns one). Right at the centre of it all is the new, gleaming, bright-white hotel on the block, The Vineta.

It’s boom time in Palm Beach, but not necessarily for the reason you think. Sure, Donald Trump is often in town and holds court at Mar-a-Lago, his Florida home and country club (the joining fee, cannily hiked shortly before his second presidential term began, is now $1 million).

However, the frenetic activity and influx into this surprisingly small, moneyed patch of America — which boasts the highest density of billionaires in the country, I’m told on my second night there — isn’t all due to him.

Think of it like the gold-rush to the Cotswolds. It’s a slightly glib comparison, but not entirely dissimilar. Californians and New Yorkers have flocked south to Palm Beach for more space, sunnier climes (at least, the ones from New York) and, crucially, more favourable taxes. This means that what has long been a wealthy area is now even more so.

It’s not possible, alas, to do a bus tour of the stars’ homes as you can in Hollywood, but take a walk up the lake trail and you’ll pass $50-million-plus house after $50-million-plus house. Drive around Palm Beach with a local and they’ll point out the Lauder house or Tom Ford’s house or the Peltz house, setting for the, ahem, controversial Brooklyn-Peltz wedding in 2022. Every other car is a Cullinan; a jar of jam in the new Bilboquet deli, a casual offshoot of the famous restaurant, will set you back $19.

This sunny spot has long been well served by swanky restaurants and members’ clubs that cost a cool half million or so to join. The likes of The Everglades Club, and Palm Beach Bath and Tennis have been here since Palm Beach started attracting the rich towards the beginning of the 20th century (on which more in a moment).

The famous pink Colony Hotel flung open its doors in 1947. However, other splashy openings are racing to keep up with demand. Polo kingpin Nacho Figueras opened The Polo Room restaurant last year. Über-exclusive members’ club the Carriage House, which opened in 2022 and is supposedly heavily influenced by 5 Hertford Street in London, has more recently jacked its joining fee to $400,000. Robin Birley has reportedly signed paperwork for a new club near Worth Avenue, which will be to Palm Beach what Maxime’s has become to Manhattan.

Then there’s the new jewel, The Vineta, a hotel bought by the Reuben brothers, David and Simon, in 2022 and managed by the Oetker Collection, the group’s first foray into the USA. Not bad for an island that is pretty small: just under four square miles or, if you prefer, the size of Richmond Park.

However, it’s technically incorrect to call The Vineta new. The building has almost always been a hotel (save for a brief transformation into a condominium block), ever since it opened to tourists in 1926. It was briefly called The Vineta back in the day, then it moved through various hands until it became The Chesterfield in 1989 and attracted Margaret Thatcher, Catherine Deneuve and Sir Rod Stewart.

After a three-year building project, the aesthetic now is classic Palm Beach: creams and blues, the odd splash of pink, with rattan detailing, shell sconces on the walls, orchids and ferns beside thick Assouline coffee-table books and wall-to-wall marble bathrooms (I should note here that the presidential suite is the only room with a bathtub; Florida is shower territory).

The interiors were handed over to the Paris-based designer Tino Zervudachi, who has looked after other hotels in the group, including the Hotel du Cap-Eden-Roc in Antibes, France, and Eden Rock St Barths in the Caribbean. I have never before stayed in such a serene hotel room — more creams, more blues, rattan lampshades, fluted bedside tables — or a hotel room that has a menu that includes a page of injectables, should I need some. How about Nefertiti Neck, to smooth out those pesky lines? Or Trapezius Tox to relax my shoulders after the long flight?

The swimming pool is sensational — destined to launch a million Instagram posts. Tino spent some time in Palm Beach doing his homework and it shows. The spiral pool handrails, for instance, are designed to match the swirl on the town’s famous Clock Tower, overlooking the beach. Coco’s, the hotel’s restaurant, features old-timers steak Diane and crêpes Suzette, which regulars from the Hotel du Cap-Eden-Roc may recognise. It all adds up to create a serene sense of continuity; the hotel may only just have opened, but it feels like a grande dame.

There’s also an in-room pet menu — including a ‘buddy burger’ beef patty with broccoli and rice for $18 or an ‘amuse pooch’ oatmeal cookie for $9. Every room (there are 41) is dog friendly. Palm Beach itself is extremely dog friendly. One morning, strolling the lake trail, I passed a chap in his eighties walking a Yorkshire terrier in a red MAGA cap. Moments later, I passed another with his poodle, in a navy MANA cap, worn by the other side; it apparently means ‘make America normal again’.

Walking is a good way to take in this place, because it’s small enough to explore on foot. Take a stroll down Worth Avenue and you’ll pass Chanel, Ferragamo and Palm Beach favourites Stubbs & Wootton (for slippers) and Lily Pulitzer (for tropical clothing). You’ll see plenty of Tesla Cybertrucks and perhaps even Mona Lisa. Not, I hasten to add, the painting, but a pig. One of the financiers has a pet pig, called Mona Lisa, whose walker takes her up and down the main drag every morning.

After that, I’d continue strolling to the Flagler Museum to brush up on Palm Beach history. Henry Flagler was the oil magnate and generous being who built the grand house that’s now a museum between 1900–02 for his third wife. He has been dubbed the ‘inventor’ of modern Florida for also constructing the railway that stretched the length of the state and allowed 19th-century travellers to discover this balmy patch of the USA. This was the Gilded Age, when it became fashionable for those who summered in Newport to winter down here.

Flagler constructed Palm Beach’s earliest glitzy hotels — the Royal Poinciana, The Breakers — and guests soon flocked. The architect Addison Mizner then rolled up his sleeves and started designing buildings in the style he’d become famous for, still evident across Palm Beach today: ‘Bastard-Spanish-Moorish-Romanesque-Bull-Market-Damn-The-Expense’, someone subsequently dubbed it. Houses and clubs that wouldn’t look out of place in Madrid, in other words, albeit with more tropical gardens. Palm trees, naturally, but also hibiscus, gardenias and plumbago. Colour is everywhere. Nothing is terribly subtle here.

‘The Palm Beach season, then as now, was a time of parties, concerts and entertainment as visitors arrived for a respite from the cold winter weather in Northern states,’ notes a plaque in the museum, beneath a grainy photograph of the Flaglers hosting a tea party on their lawn, alongside their friends visiting from Britain, the Duke and Duchess of Manchester.

That was as correct then as it is now, as the season still exists in these parts and runs roughly from Thanksgiving, when everyone descends from the north, until Easter, when they return to the east coast. ‘It basically empties, it’s a ghost town,’ says a friend, of the summer months, when it’s too hot and humid to do much outside.

However, during the season, oof, remember your vitamins — because it is busy. Supper after supper, charity event after charity event. Are we talking endless charity parties for blind and impoverished dolphins, I ask my friend, assuming there are a good number of rich people here looking for a cause — any cause — to distract them from pilates ($68 a class) and all that golf? ‘Not all,’ she says, contemplatively, ‘although we did go to a charity event for dolphins the other day.’

I stop by one drinks party at a private home (with the usual army of uniformed staff) with martinis the size of fish bowls and a woman tells me she’s drinking as many as she can before speaking to her lawyer about her divorce that evening. That party was to raise money for local beaches. The next night, at another charity do, in aid of the mangroves, former model and heiress Amanda Hearst makes a speech about the importance of the ocean and I talk to a Norwegian who only mentions half an hour into our conversation that he’s a director. Quite a major director. He’s Amanda's husband, Joachim Rønning, and he’s directed a ‘Tron’ film as well as the last in the ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’ series.

Then it’s off to dinner at the Everglades; the next night, a supper at another private home by the pool. At least American dinner parties finish early, all wrapped up by 11pm. I developed a chest infection after several days here, despite the tropical warmth. London socialising is nowhere near as frenetic as Palm Beach in season.

In 1995, when property tycoon Frank Lahainer died in Palm Beach, the story goes, his widow Gianna had his body embalmed and kept at a funeral home for more than a month, so she didn’t have to skip any parties. ‘Why would I wait?’ Gianna reportedly said, ‘I would miss the season.’ Quite right.

This is a party town — and the fun must go on.

Rooms at The Vineta start from £735 per night on a B&B basis, excluding taxes. Click here for more information and to book.

Some hotels spend an awful lot of time, energy and money trying to convince guests that they're cool. Ace Hotel in Brooklyn is not one of them.

This outpost of the growing group — they have a habit of opening in locations on the verge of being gentrified (in this case Boerum Hill on the fringes of Downton Brooklyn) — feels embedded in the neighbourhood around it.

It's a hotel but also: a community hub, workspace, music venue and, occasionally, what feels like Brooklyn's most attractive living room.

The rooms

The rooms are exactly what you'd hope for from a Brooklyn hotel — but executed better than most. There are concrete ceilings and ginormous factory casement windows, inspired by the building's industrial architecture. The latter allow light to flood in throughout the day; some look onto neighbouring residential buildings, others, on the upper floors, provide sweeping views across the city that are tricky to tear your eyes away from.

The decor — bespoke, mid-century-style furniture, locally-made artwork, accents of forest green and navy blue — helps to soften the industrial bones of the building.

My room came equipped with a vintage turntable, which immediately made me feel cooler than I actually am.

Eating and drinking

The Lobby (above) — open all day for coffee and food, and late into the evening when it transforms into a lively bar — is the hotel's beating heart.

A huge number of the local work-from-home crowd use it as a substitute office and, far from negatively affecting the atmosphere, they give the place purpose. Too many hotels try to cultivate a sense of exclusivity by restricting access to their communal spaces — and end up feeling soulless.

There's nothing soulless about Lele's Roman, a restaurant inspired by the lively Roman neighbourhood of Trastevere. You'd never know it, but it isn't operated by the Ace group itself, despite occupying the same building. Order a big bowl of rustic pasta — the world's greatest food group and I won't entertain alternative opinions — and a baby negroni (or three, which just about equals a normal serving).

There's also Koju, a 14-course omakase experience, for something a little bit more formal.

How they'll keep you busy

There is a gym outfitted by the heavyweights at Yeah, I Work Out, which looked excellent.

I had every intention of using it.

I did not.

Thankfully, there are plenty of other ways to occupy your time.

Ace's artist-in-residence programme means there's always something interesting to marvel at as you wander through the lobby. The hotel also maintains an impressively curated calendar of live music, parties, talks and community gatherings.

Failing that, simply retreat to your room and indulge in my favourite sport: people-watching.

What else to do while you're here

Ace describes its location as being 'at the ever-evolving intersection of everything'.

I approached such a claim with some scepticism. This is New York, after all. Every neighbourhood could make a convincing argument for being at the centre of culture, food, music, The Arts and whatever else happens to be fashionable that week. But the hotel sits just two blocks from Atlantic Avenue, the 10.5-mile thoroughfare stretching from Brooklyn's waterfront all the way to Jamaica, Queens. It's dotted with independent boutiques, homeware shops, vintage stores, upscale coffee shops and enviably well-stocked global grocers.

The area is also one of Brooklyn's major transport hubs, making it remarkably easy to hop into Manhattan whenever the mood strikes.

Who's it for?

Everyone.

That may sound like a cop-out, but Ace is fundamentally about community — and making guests feel like they're part of one. Whether you're travelling alone, as a couple or with a group of friends, there's a sense of belonging here that's surprisingly rare.

What gives it the 'wow' factor?

The attention to detail. The subtle kind.

The Smeg fridges tucked into the rooms. The wonderfully easy-to-use Tivoli radios. The quirky typography on the in-room dining menus and information packs. Every element feels considered without ever feeling precious.

The staff also deserve special mention — and not just because someone complimented my jacket minutes after arriving. Even at my pre-dawn departure they were warm and helpful.

The one thing we'd change

Activity from The Lobby and the rumble of nearby subway lines might disturb light sleepers. For most guests, however, it's simply part of the soundtrack of staying in one of New York's most characterful neighbourhoods.

Rooms at Ace Hotel in Brooklyn start from $349. For more information and to book, visit their website.

There are hotels that shout about their luxury and then there are those that simply assume you'll notice it. Hotel Metropole Monte-Carlo belongs firmly in the latter camp. Hidden behind its Belle Époque façade, just moments from the glittering heart of Monaco, it manages to feel both grand and unexpectedly intimate.

The rooms

The recently renovated suites and bedrooms, redesigned by Jacques Garcia, are a lesson in restrained indulgence — including my favourite, the Deluxe Premium Junior Suite. Decorated in the prettiest shade of yellow with delicate floral detailing, they mimic the Mediterranean light pouring in through the windows.

Clever televisions rotate 180℃, meaning they can face either the bed or the sitting room sofa, and gleaming silver, roll-top baths will have you thinking about cancelling your supper reservations in favour of another soak.

Then there's the Carré d'Or Suite which, as well as it’s own library, stocked with more than 100 books, has a sprawling terrace with envy-inducing views across the Principality. At present, it's furnished with rich plum upholstery and polished mahogany wood furniture, but rumour has it that Jacques Garcia is about to work his magic. If that's true, it will almost certainly become one of the most desirable suites in Monaco.

Eating and drinking

Les Ambassadeurs, the hotel's two-Michelin-starred restaurant, is a reminder that fine dining needn't take itself too seriously. I was looked after by the indomitable Marco, who I later discovered had received the Michelin Service Award 2026, ‘for his meticulous and elegant service’.

The meal is bookended by two trolleys — a chariot of bread, piled precariously high with sourdoughs and other inventive doughy creations, and a pudding trolley. In between, a page of the menu is dedicated to half-size dishes, should you want to try a little bit of everything.

Elsewhere, there’s Yoshi, the only Japanese restaurant in the region to hold a Michelin star, and a further two informal, al fresco options.

How they'll keep you busy

The Guerlain Spa is a calming sanctuary dressed in shiny marble, vanilla-coloured wood and discreet gold accents. With ten treatment rooms, a generous gym, hammam, sauna and sensory shower among its facilities, it's the sort of place where an hour somehow stretches into an entire afternoon.

Outside, you’ll find the hotel’s secret (at least to me) masterpiece: the Odyssey swimming pool. It is one of only two pools that CHANEL's Karl Lagerfeld designed and its monochromatic colour scheme is reminiscent of his own black and white ‘uniform’ consisting of a tailored black jacket, a high-collared, white starched shirt, a black tie, black jeans or trousers, and fingerless leather gloves. You’re protected from prying eyes by the elegant topiary surrounding it.

What else to do while you're here

Monaco's greatest hits are all within easy reach. Try your luck beneath the chandeliers of the iconic Casino de Monte-Carlo, watch the Changing of the Guard at the Prince's Palace or admire the parade of superyachts in Port Hercule.

The hotel is connected to the Metropole Shopping Monte-Carlo centre, and guests enjoy selected discounts across a wide range of boutiques. Before leaving, make a beeline for HeathStore, a French pharmacy-style emporium devoted entirely to health and wellbeing. It's the sort of place that inspires entirely unnecessary purchases — and puts Boots to shame.

The Monaco Royal Family's car collection is extensive (if you've thought of it, chances are the Grimaldis own it) and available to marvel at. You can read Country Life correspondent Zachary Weiss's feature on it, here.

Who's it for?

Couples and small groups of friends. Families are well accommodated, but the refined interiors and sophisticated swimming pool lend themselves to an older clientele looking for a glamorous escape rather than organised entertainment.

What gives it the ‘wow’ factor?

The swimming pool. I had no idea about its Karl Lagerfeld pedigree until a member of staff mentioned it, but even before then its striking design had completely drawn me in.

The one thing we'd change

The lobby. Despite the beautiful seasonal floral arrangement at its heart, the space feels very dark and a bit too cosy for a place that is blessed with year-round sunshine.

The new Jacques Garcia rooms start from €1,250 per night on a bed and breakfast basis. For more information and to book, visit the Metropole website.

Behind a fortress of wild white roses, I spy, from the comfort of my own bed, perhaps, the most magnificent view in all of Italy laid out beneath me: the city of Florence. Where is this bed, I hear you ask? In Villa San Michele, a Belmond hotel.

I have been coming to this part of the world since I was a child. My English aunt, Maureen, married an Italian, Gino, and, with their three daughters, lived a 25-minute or so drive away from this lavish villa in the dinky town of Montelupo Fiorentino — a place I remember fondly for its brilliantly creamy gelato and sleepy pizzerias.

I’m spending two days in the stately villa, which serves as a reminder of why the cradle of the Renaissance continues to fascinate and intrigue. Since the 15^th century, San Michele has led countless lives, firstly as a humble Franciscan monastery and later as a wartime base for the French republic’s rebel, Napoleon.

It became a hotel in the 1950s and has been visited by a dizzying array of stars and nobility from The King (then the Prince of Wales), to Julia Roberts, Robert De Niro, George Clooney, and Gwyneth Paltrow.

A few weeks ago it emerged from an 18-month-long renovation, overseen by Florence-based interior design studio Luigi Fragola Architects, with 39 rooms and suites, three restaurants and Italy’s first Guerlain spa. The question is, was the refurb worth the wait? The devil really is in all of its fantastical details.

The 27 suites and 12 bedrooms pay homage to local Tuscan craft and to the country’s botanical heritage. Think ornate, floral tapestries and frescoes (the latter were restored by Florentine artists), scagliola furniture and restored Baroque fireplaces. Impruneta terracotta has been used with wild abandon in the floors and all of the bathrooms have been clad in green-veined cipollino marble. The bathroom in the Signature Garden Suite is a particular showstopper.

The best room in the house is the Limonaia Suite — a two-storey, Fiesolan-style villa that’s full of curios, antiques and collectibles. To my delight, the minibar was stuffed full of Ginori teacups. The gloriously plump bed sits beneath a beautifully ornate mural of woodland and fluttering birds. And there’s a private garden and plunge pool with 180-degree-views and a sightline to the Duomo.

The main gardens are extensive — and one of San Michele’s most impressive assets — tended to, during the renovation, by Luca Ghezzi Garden Design. The terraced sprawl — paved avenues, immaculate flowerbeds and borders , a 200-year-old wisteria — currently covers an immense 10,000sq m. Blooms include lavender, rosemary, agapanthus, hydrangea, pomegranate, iris and boxwoods, plus bountiful citrus trees (lots of lemons) and a stately 42m-long avenue of roses.

The driving design force is geometry, not just for aesthetics, but to evoke the Roman ideal of otium (Latin for ‘leisure’). The garden is a space for contemplative leisure, relaxation and the pursuit of tranquility, conversation and appreciation. Essentially, garden gossip.

Food? Hit and miss. Executive chef’s Alessandro Cozzolino’s menu reinterprets (a word I often shudder at on Italian menus) Tuscan classics, and while bold in presentation and setting (on the terrace) the dishes at the San Michele Restaurant often miss the mark by falling victim to the chef’s ‘twists’ and attempts at experimentation. That said, the Neapolitan’s talent shines when it comes to pizza — the margarita, for example, is a total triumph. No easy feat.

Despite the new money crowd who like to show off at golden hour on the veranda it’s all very relaxing. The new Villa San Michele has been designed with Belmond’s ‘slow living’ philosophy in mind, and, as such, there are ‘Energy Raising’ programmes and yoga decks available on demand. Yes, the Guerlain spa is pretty, and yes, the treatments are indulgent, but reading your book on your own, rose-scented balcony will put you in a similarly transcendent state. Is there a greater pleasure in life? I think not.

While the Florence of my youth has changed beyond recognition — thank you overtourism – Villa San Michele serves as a reminder of the city that once was. A peaceful sanctuary of beauty and inspiration.

Rooms at Villa San Michele, a Belmond Hotel, start from £1,400 on a bed and breakfast basis.

Some may question why the Six Senses global chain of five-star hotels and spas chose to open its inaugural British venture in this part of London, but it seems fitting that this restorative retreat is set within one of the capital’s most elegant landmarks.

With its majestic colonnaded Portland stone façade, distinctive rooftop cupolas and elaborate Edwardian shop-front glazing, not to mention its proximity to Hyde Park and Notting Hill, the Whiteley building was once a bustling emporium. At its height, Yorkshireman William Whiteley’s retail empire — which started life as a tiny drapery on Westbourne Grove in 1863: think Woman of Substance vibes — employed 6,000 staff, featured an in-store theatre, had a golf course on the roof and promised its genteel clientele the chance to purchase anything ‘from a pin to an elephant’.

The irony then, that this statuesque property that closed as a shopping centre in 2018 has been reinvented, as part of a £1.5 billion pound refurbishment by the architects Foster + Partners, as an achingly cool, health-conscious and quietly luxurious hotel was not lost on me. I also could not help but wonder what Whiteley (who was shot dead in 1907 by a man claiming to be his illegitimate son) would make of the way his pride and joy, known as ‘the Harrods of Bayswater’, looks now.

The 109-room Six Senses London opened on March 1, 2026. Once you’ve entered the serene, hushed and plant-filled lobby — dominated by a dramatic, black-iron and marble-stepped spiral staircase that ascends to the third floor — it’s clear that the space affords a peaceful refuge from the hurry and noise outside.

As soon as I walked in, I felt awash with a sense of calm and tranquillity. I was expecting a high level of attentive service, which was quickly confirmed by Egesa on reception, who warmly welcomed me with a spritz of a ginger spray, after I’d selected it from a deck of botanical tarot-style cards. However, I was not prepared for the way that the glazed rotunda (directly above the circular bar in the Six Senses Space, the brand’s discreet — and first ever — private members’ club) infuses the first floor with light and a steadying atmosphere of stillness.

Our junior suite was a triumph of clean lines, furnished with modern, Art Deco-inspired curved furniture, velvet sofas and a round table to eat at. The generous, twin-sinked bathroom, with a bath plus a shower within a wet room, was perfect for two girlfriends getting ready for an event. A separate loo was a bonus, too, although I never quite got to grips with its heated seat and integrated bidet.

The food, served at the Whiteley’s Kitchen — either in the colonial-style restaurant (white walls, ivy-green leather banquettes and rattan chairs) or outside on the olive-tree studded terrace in the sun-drenched central courtyard — offers a vegetable-first menu of enticing small plates, such as courgettes romana with fermented peppers, green chard rolls with mushroom XO and ricotta nettle agnolotti.

This philosophy of nourishing, sustainably-sourced nutrition was also in evidence at breakfast, where you can have what you want, fuelled by exquisite coffee from Brazil and Rwanda, and help yourself from a ‘wellness’ trolley, laden with gut-friendly kombucha, kimchi and sauerkraut, plus turmeric shots, made in the hotel’s ‘fermentation lab’.

Having been at a party the night before, we did not fancy wine with our lunch, but were pleasantly surprised when the Wine Director, Eugenio, recommended a delicious non-alcoholic alternative in the shape of a glass of Feral N°1 White beet Hop Szechuan Pepper, which was fresh, citrussy and spicy.

The standout factor of this establishment, however, has to be the spa and gym spanning nearly 24,000 square feet (reportedly the largest at a London hotel and the first to offer a magnesium bath, alongside a soon-to-be-opened 65 foot indoor lap pool) on the lower ground floor. Descending the steps to this subterranean idyll, it’s impossible not to gasp at the myriad suspended creamy-white handmade porcelain petals in Ula Saniawa of Unit 89’s sculpture above the shallow pool in the spa reception area.

I was able to exhale further when Nuryiye, one of the sage green linen-clad therapists, treated me to one of the very best massages I have ever had. Involving body rocking, vigorous dry brushing and a sound bath, the treatment — which was so blissful, I did not want it to end — concentrated on my calves, tummy and shoulders to promote lymphatic drainage. There is also a Biohack Recovery Lounge, supported by a HUM2N Longevity Clinic offering medical-grade diagnostics and screenings.

Finally, in what might be a nod to the property’s heritage and a desire to nurture health and welfare by combining the latest gym-equipment technology — such as compression boots and electro-muscle stimulation — with age-old remedies, the hotel’s wellness ethos includes an intriguing Alchemy Bar.

Designed to look like an old, wood-panelled apothecary, with countless drawers and jars containing all manner of herbs, spices and concoctions — as well as dried flowers hanging from the ceiling—this is where the hotel’s herbalists assess guests’ individual needs and come up with a tincture designed to address their personal circumstances through the healing power of plants. My bespoke recipe — delivered by Jade the next morning, after an hour-long interview the previous day — included oat straw, rose, skullcap, lemon balm, motherwort and hawthorn, to ease anxiety, mental fatigue and general overwhelm by diluting it with water and drinking twice a day. All of which ensured that I left with a lasting, and mood-enhancing, souvenir of my time at a genuinely fascinating and thoughtfully-run hotel.

Rooms at Six Senses London start from £800.

Zurich is a still-waters-run-deep kind of place, full of paradoxes and surprises. Outwardly, the central police station is unremarkable. Inside, its walls and ceilings are covered in frescos by Augusto Giacometti, as rich and vibrant and velvety as a rose garden in full bloom. How much more mixed can civic messages get? The building itself plays both good cop and bad cop: you’re under arrest, but you have the right to remain exquisite.

A few hundred yards away, the Baur au Lac, loveliest of the city’s hotels (and a much nicer place to spend the night than the police station, despite the frescos), embodies one or two paradoxes and surprises of its own.

The ‘Baur’ in its name came from its proprietor, Johannes Baur, who built the hotel in 1844. The ‘au Lac’ described its location close to the shore of Lake Zurich and distinguished it from its sister property, the Baur en Ville, which had opened six years earlier, on Paradeplatz. So far, so unparadoxical and unsurprising.

Baur’s contemporaries thought he’d lost his mind. A hotel not merely on the lake, but also facing the lake, with snowcapped mountains in the distance? Verrückt! Sublime vistas of that kind simply weren’t a thing in those days. The Alpinism craze hadn’t taken off yet and conventional wisdom held that a Swiss city hotel either faced the city centre or imminent closure. Yet Baur was on to something. His guests quickly acquired a taste for the hotel’s unusual situation and orientation, as well as for its aura of leafy, marbled, Italianate lusciousness — a definition of the grand hotel as we’ve come to understand it.

More than 180 years later, the Baur au Lac is run by the same family — now the Krachts, after a Baur married a Kracht. Its ongoing appeal has to do entirely with the Krachts’ hands-on approach. They’ve tirelessly tweaked and compulsively adjusted to make sure the place remains fresh and relevant. Gigi Kracht (sixth generation) has done a huge amount to align the hotel with the city’s contemporary art scene — without dispensing with the Gobelin tapestries, Chinese vases or the perfect little oak-framed kiosk in the lobby.

Martin Brudnizki’s glow-up of Baur’s Bar & Brasserie was a smash hit — so much so that he was subsequently entrusted to repeat the miracle on the Michelin-starred Pavillon restaurant. Rechristened Marguita in honour of two members of the Kracht family (fifth and seventh generations), it’s surely the most joyful dining room in the city, with a carefree, tousle-haired, lemon-scented whiff of Positano about it.

The fact that the lake and the Alps are in one direction and the spires of the Fraumünster and Grossmünster in the other only adds to the thrilling sense of incongruity.

Rooms at Baur au Lac start from from CHF1050 (about £980) per night on a room-only basis. Visit the hotel website for more information and to book.

‘Corsica came into view with the dawn. Almost colourless, its outlines uncertain, it swam in the early morning mist… the mountains surged into the sky… their lower slopes, smothered in vegetation, looked uninhabited and impenetrable.’

So Dorothy Carrington described her arrival to Corsica by boat in 1948 in Granite Island (1971). Soaring in from above, my views of the mountains, so many years later, were just the same, but, once I had landed, I claimed for myself the sight of the golden sun setting behind the famous lion of Roccapina, silhouetting its pink granite shape as we wound our way to Domaine de Murtoli.

Arriving at dusk, I stepped into an air heavy with the scent of maquis — myrtle, rosemary, lavender and thyme — welcoming wood-smoke and sea salt.

People often say that Corsica is a French Island that basks in the Italian sun, but in this corner in the island's south-west, on an estate of more than 6,000 acres, Corsica is defiantly itself.

The hotel’s story starts in 1993, when Paul Canarelli inherited a parcel of land, neatly sandwiched between sea and mountain. He decided, as a sort of homage to his grandfather and to the land, to restore one of the 17th-century shepherd houses — a number of which dot the fields, some overlooking the sea, some in the olive-tree groves.

The dry-stone walls were duly crowned with ancient terracotta tiles, heavy shutters, carved from chestnut wood, were installed and an oak floor laid. Stone sinks were brought in and the walls were washed in lime.

Today, there are 20 such houses, all immaculately restored to their original footprints. Their windows frame views of a shimmering sea, Aubrac cows, sheep and, even, opportunistic wild boar, rootling for acorns, figs and chestnuts. Often, the only sound to interrupt the delicious silence is birdsong.

Twenty-first-century luxuries, including private pools, often set between rocks, have also been installed. There is a central farmhouse with a clutch of suites for those who might find the cottages too isolating, plus a bar and a restaurant. In the winter, a soaring fireplace keeps diners warm; in the summer, it’s possible to eat outside on the lavender-filled terrace.

The farm-to-table concept triumphs here; think Murtoli’s own sheep's cheese and honey, chestnuts and beef, wine and olive oil. Fruits and vegetables come from the large, organic garden.

New this year is A Mandria di Murtoli, a Tuscan hamlet-style offering, next door. There are rooms in the main house, surrounded by lemon trees, and suites inside the sheepfolds. The communal swimming pool is the perfect spot from which to watch the sun slip behind the surrounding hills, surrounded by fairy light-strewn olive trees and the smell of tagliolini al limone. It's one of the moments that might just make you believe in magic.

Rooms at Domaine de Murtoli start from €290 at the Hôtel de la Ferme and from €330 in a Shepherd House.

Rooms at A Mandria di Murtoli start from €280 in a double room in the main building and from €270 in a Shepherd House.

Visit the website for more information and to book.

It was here, in Positano, that Hercules lost his heart to a nymph called Amalfi and where the very concept of la dolce vita was born.

Set amid the vast cloud-capped mountains and terraces studded with colourful houses, rests another legend, too: Le Sirenuse.

The former home of the Sersale family, over the past seven decades it has evolved to become one of the hotel world’s greatest addresses. Its latest venture is one of its most ambitious: Le Sirenuse Mare, a beach club set in the nearby, sleepy fishing village of Nerano.

Quiet and far from the maddening crowds, the beach club’s home remains something of an insider secret. The building of it spanned five years. ‘Le Mare is an extension of the Le Sirenuse world,’ says co-owner Aldo Sersale. ‘Like our hotel, [it] has its own rhythm and character and represents a warm, genuine and authentic side to the Italian coast.’

The family called on Architetti Artigiani Anonimi to bring their vision to life and the reality is a bold and colourful space accented by the vernacular traditions of the Amalfi Coast: handmade terracotta and ceramic floor tiles, chestnut-wood pergolas and undulating cannucciato sunshades.

The garden, landscaped by Paolo Pejrone, is filled with eucalyptus, umbrella pine and lemon trees. As in the hotel, art is a prominent feature, with installations scattered across the space by artists such as Giuseppe Ducrot, Alba Clemente and Lucio Liguori — and the bar is named after British artist Rose Wylie.

The restaurant is open for lunch, every day, with executive chef Gennaro Russo and Calabrian chef Francesco De Simone at the helm. ‘Sheer natural goodness’ and ‘vibrant flavours’ are the heart of everything they make. Think spaghetti alla Nerano and all the fruits of the sea, plus a pudding bar dedicated to the gods of gelati, granita and classic Italian treats.

However, Le Sirenuse Mare’s sweetest element is its outlook. This, as Aldo says, is not a party destination. ‘[It is] a relaxed, elegant and supremely laidback’ — and on a coast that, over the years, has become overwhelmingly frenetic, is desperately needed.

This feature originally appeared in the April 29, 2026, issue of Country Life. Click here for more information on how to subscribe.

Hero hotel

Bull Burford

Although this Grade II*-listed building dates back to 1475 and has been an inn since the 16th century, this is a hotel that now dresses in a far more contemporary style.

You might notice it first with the name: no superfluous ‘the’ or ‘in’; this is the clean, concise Bull Burford, or perhaps the branding. If you opt to take the train (into nearby Charlbury or Kingham), you can arrange to be picked up in an all-black Defender with ‘BULL’ emblazoned on its side in a chunky sans serif typeface, which you’ll see again. You definitely notice it upon arrival, when your eyes dart between the curvaceous black check-in desk and the Jean-Michel Basquiat painting, Charles the First, that are juxtaposed with gnarled wooden beams and weathered chunks of original wall.

This old-meets-new Bull, which opened in 2023, is the brainchild of longtime Burford resident Matthew Freud, the famed PR executive well versed in putting a winning spin on things. It’s his personal art collection that enlivens the public spaces and 18 bedrooms — a collection he describes in the in-room guides as ‘eclectic and incoherent’, taking in everything from Alberto Korda’s iconic Che Guevara portrait (hung above the fire in the lounge bar) to Matisse’s Blue Nude (hung in Zen, the treatment room I can highly recommend). My room, the lofty wabi-sabi-chic Venetian, has its pastel-pink lime-plaster walls lined with an array of 15th-century portraits of Roman emperors who would have surely approved of the super king-size bed, feather-soft robes and all-natural Wildsmith bath products.

There’s little chance of you going hungry or thirsty. Graze is the street-side coffee, juice and infusions bar where breakfast is served. Horn is the inviting modern Mediterranean restaurant, Slice the outdoor pizza terrace and Vincent’s bar the building’s central hub. If you can find it, there’s also a wine-cellar snug that currently houses Idris Elba’s own personal poker table, but is soon to get a more speakeasy-style makeover.

One of Bull’s greatest lures, however, and what helped it land a Michelin Key in the autumn, is Wild. Not really a restaurant in its own right, but a 10-person, 11-course dine-by-fire experience with amiable chef Ben Chamberlain in its own seasonally adaptable tent. It’s communal, convivial and clever in its menu (charred beets, seared trout, scurvy grass, Turkish bazlama flatbreads and monkfish all feature alongside locally sourced meats) and stands as something of an analogue for the hotel itself: not necessarily reinventing the wheel, but adding a confident dash of personality for those who’ve had their fill of Cotswold classicism.

Rooms at Bull Burford start from £275 per night. Visit their website for more information and to book.

Need to know

Burford itself is undeniably pretty. A well-to-do honeyed-stone high street tapers down a steep hill to a narrow bridge over the River Windrush, crocuses peek out from grassy verges and quaint lanes spill off this way and that.

Bull sits almost perfectly in the middle of it all. There’s enough to this vibrant market town to easily while away a weekend, including great antiques and homewares stores, a string of small art galleries and plenty of pubs to provide refreshment.

The 15th-century church of St John the Baptist still stands impressively in the village’s north-east and is supposedly what prompted William Morris to found the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings after popping in after lunch in 1876 and taking umbrage with the tiled floor being added as part of its restoration.

The town’s picturesque old priory — home to Matthew and his partner, Sheherazade Goldsmith — sporadically opens up its sweeping grounds to show off its spring and summer blooms to raise money for local charities. The Freud fiefdom also extends to the nearby rectory, now a nine-bedroom, exclusive-use country crashpad available on Airbnb, ideal for group getaways.

Beyond the town borders, nearby Charlbury boasts its own bull, The Bull Charlbury, from London’s heralded Public House Group, which, confusingly, sits opposite Daylesford’s The Bell. All of the Cotswolds’ greatest hits — Bourton-on-the-Water, Stow-on-the-Wold, Chipping Norton etc—are within easy driving distance, with Cheltenham 40 minutes to the west and Oxford 40 minutes to the east.

Where to eat

• Only about 165 feet down the street, you’ll find Bull’s sister hotel, Highway, a similarly styled pared-back old inn with its own tapas restaurant, Toro, serving sunny Spanish small plates at lunch and dinner.
• The bijou Bakery on the Hill is great for a coffee, a pastry, or some classic farm-fresh breakfasts. For something with a little more ceremony, Hugo Lovage Patisserie offers a full afternoon tea, as well as plenty of sweet treats to take away
• Pub-wise, you’re well catered for. The locals are quick to recommend the ‘proper’ shortcrust pies served at the Royal Oak. Its neighbour the Angel offers elevated British fare in a cosy setting. If you fancy stretching your legs first, the Fox at Barrington is just over an hour’s scenic walk away

What to do while you’re there

• Walks The ‘Walkabull’ map left in every room charts some well-planned walking routes of varying length and difficulty, from a pub-lined tour to Taynton to a peaceful valley-view stroll via Westwell and Holwell
• Shop It’s not often the local garden centre gains must-visit status, but Burford’s 15-acre horticultural hub is one the UK’s best, stocking everything from rare trees to Sunspel tees. Its palm-lined café is a great lunch spot

This feature originally appeared in the April 22, 2026, issue of Country Life. Click here for more information on how to subscribe.

There’s no business like show business, except perhaps for the hospitality business, which in the Dorchester’s Oliver Messel Terrace Suite, comes with all the bells and whistles of a West End sell-out. It is rare to stay somewhere where the designer’s original vision has been so tangibly realised and well preserved, but on my hunt for the best hotel rooms in the country, I managed it in here.

Throughout the room, rosette-style hangings frame watercolour costume designs by Messel as the prize pieces of art they are. By the door there is an illuminated ‘EXIT’ sign, just like those in London’s theatres, that I can’t imagine ever wanting to follow. The Dorchester’s star suite is a marvel. And that’s all before I’ve mentioned the set-pièce de résistance: the loo seat shaped like a golden shell that is decadent enough to make any performance feel Olivier Award-worthy.

Messel, the English artist who died in 1978, is remembered for much more than just this golden throne. One of the best-known stage designers of the 20th century, his theatrical debut came when he designed the masks for a London production of Serge Diaghilev’s ballet Zephyr et Flore (1925). Famously, he also designed the sets and costumes for the Royal Ballet’s 1946 production of Sleeping Beauty, many illustrations of which hang in the suite, as well as a string of other impressive shows and films. Those in his close circle included the production’s prima ballerina Margot Fonteyn, Princess Margaret and Cecil Beaton.

The suite, a short spit away from where Messel grew up in a house overlooking Hyde Park, was originally designed by the artist and opened in 1953. It has been restored and was re-opened this January as part of larger restoration works at The Dorchester. The work was led by the specialist painters and decorators at Hare & Humphreys, who spent more than 2,000 hours and used more than 2,750 sheets of 23.5-carat gold leaf to meticulously refresh every detail of the 133sq m suite. Messel said that it is a place he would have liked to have lived in himself, a wish that I am sure would still be true today (more modern features include a large television in the living area, but this has been hidden behind a panel printed with a Messel painting that slides up on demand in order to keep the era-specific magic of the suite alive and well).

A particular gem, courtesy of the restoration, is a hand-painted mural on the domed ceiling between the corridor and drawing room. This was discovered under layers of paint by the renovation team and features an arch of roses painted by Messel himself, complete with his original pencil sketch marks.

The suite as a whole is a marvel, with a sense of playfulness throughout — exemplified by its ‘bookshelves’ that are actually hidden doors. A parlour for waiting visitors leads through to a well-stocked pantry, sitting and dining room, outdoor terrace and a master bedroom with en-suite bathroom. Messel’s career-long dedication to ballet, opera, theatre and art shines through in all. So does the sun, which beams through the curved French doors to the three-sided terrace when we arrive for our stay (I took my mum along for the experience. We were both giddy with excitement when we saw the suite). Despite overlooking the many building works going on around the hotel, this still serves as the perfect tranquil suntrap on which to relax with a book in one hand and a chilled glass of Dom Perignon (courtesy of the hotel) in the other.

It’s easy to see why the suites’ catalogue of former guests includes the rich and fabulous. It was Elizabeth Taylor’s favourite place to stay in London, apparently, although when my mum presses our butler Sean for further names his discretion is impressively ironclad. ‘I can assure you, your secrets will be very safe. I will tell nobody what you did here tonight,’ he promises enigmatically, which is a shame given we had a lovely, yet notably not outrageous, stay. And, it’s not just the array of mysterious guests that makes the Oliver Messel suite famous. The design of the residence itself is so notable that a scale model of the original 1953 suite is part of the permanent collection at the V&A Museum.

The showstopping room is the bedroom. Ottoman yellow silk-lined walls and gilded mouldings make for grand yet whimsical sleeping quarters. ‘It’s like marmite. People either love it or they hate it,’ Sean tells me. We loved it. A skirted dressing table decorated with a vase of yellow roses and a perfume atomiser is such a picture of 1950s glamour that it's almost as though Taylor could strut in at any moment to powder her nose before a glamorous night out. Hand-painted mirrors featuring Messel’s characters and enchanted trees frame a large indulgent bed canopied in yet more yellow silk. It’s the perfect stage to inspire a night of dreams in which you are the lead performer in a show entirely of your own making.

Room rates are subject to enquiry and may vary. For enquiries, please visit The Dorchester’s website.

Storfjord Hotel is a hush-hush, hill-top retreat about an hour inland from Ålesund, south-west Norway’s Art Nouveau fishing town, and it delivers cosiness and quietude in spades.

It’s the full Scandi fantasy: a cluster of classic Norwegian log cabins with chimneys made out of Jenga-stacked stones and grass growing on the roof.

Birch and pine forests stretch in every direction and, out front, sheepskin-swathed Adirondack chairs come with front-row views of the Hans Dahl scenes of the fjord that gives the hotel its name.

In the communal living room, which smells of wood smoke and pine, you’ll hear the crackle of embers glowing in the fireplace. And in every nook, there are plush, tartan sofas or leather wingback chairs to curl up in with a birch cider and a tome borrowed from the communal bookshelf.

The 30 rooms and suites are snug, lined in pale pine and wool, with fireplaces that flicker to life at the push of a button and balconies that frame nothing but forest and fjord. The best one to book is the suite above the main living room, from where you can spy on the goings-on on the fire-warmed terrace below before turning in with a glass of apple brandy.

With a wealth of farms and a wild larder on its doorstep, Storfjord’s food is, unsurprisingly, outstanding. Mornings start with a breakfast buffet of still-warm sourdough and local staples, such as dill-flecked salmon gravlax and caramel-like brown cheese. Lunches and dinners change with the bounty of the season and include everything from local lamb with baked beets and pan-fried Brussel sprouts, to snap peas and monkfish from the nearby coast. You’ll want to pair it with the apple cider from the neighbouring 1,000-year-old Skarbø farm, where it is pressed exclusively for the hotel.

On some evenings, guests gather in the lavvo, a giant traditional Sámi tent pitched between the trees a short walk away from the hotel, for forest-to-table dinners of brisket and root vegetables cooked over open flames.

Days here unfurl like a choose-your-own-adventure game. There are forest trails for easy walks and tougher treks tracing Storfjord’s hilly spine. E-bikes stand ready by the main lodge and the hotel can arrange kayak excursions on the fjord or helicopter tours deeper into the Sunnmøre Alps that roll to the horizon. A wood-fired sauna and hot tub help ease weary limbs and there’s a spa therapist on call for Swedish massages make knotted muscles melt. At sunset, you could take the boat to the hotel’s seafood-centric sister restaurant, Sjøbua, in Ålesund’s postcard harbour, where fishing boats still dock with their metal bellies full of the day’s catch.

If you’re feeling a tad more ambitious, 62°Nord, Storfjord Hotel’s tour operator-arm, can map out multi-day road trips by race bike or in one of the resort’s whisper-quiet electric Porsche Taycans. These include stops at sister hotels deeper into Sunnmørsalpene (the Sunnmøre Alps).

However, there’s no shame in simply staying put — wrapped in a woolly blanket, and soaking in those soul-soothing views.

Rooms at Storfjord Hotel start from 4090NOK (about £307) on a bed and breakfast basis. Visit the 62°Nord website for more information and to book.

Hôtel Byblos is a reminder of Saint-Tropez days gone by — a heady mix of glamorous and bohemian styles that brings to mind the Golden Age of travel. Something that doesn’t seem that surprising when you recall that Lebanese billionaire Jean-Prosper Gay-Para was inspired to build the hotel by his hopeless infatuation with Brigitte Bardot (below).

(Legend has it that the Lebanese town of Byblos is where Adonis and Aphrodite became lovers.)

The French actress and singer catapulted both herself and the then sleepy fishing village on the map on account of her sexually-charged performance in And Then God Created Woman (1956). It received a mixed critical reception—the Catholic National Legion of Decency in the US 'condemned’ it — but was a massive commercial success.

Whether Gay-Para was successful in his romantic endeavour is up for debate. Yes, Bardot frequented Byblos — which quickly became a celebrity magnet that attracted stars such as Mick Jagger and Cher — but she didn’t attend the opening party. And he was up against some touch competition. In 1966, Germany’s ‘prince of pleasure’ Gunter Sachs famously dropped a tonne of red rose petals out of a helicopter over Bardot’s La Madrague home — she married him the same year.

Today, the nearly 100-room hotel is arranged around a courtyard and swimming pool — each building painted in warming tones of ochre, rust red and terracotta. In 2024, four new suites, designed by Paris-based interior designer Laura Gonzalez were introduced — and what a treat they are. One is daubed in coral, a second in yellow, the third in turquoise and a fourth in jade green. Not so subtle nods to retro design include the ceramic minibars inspired by travel trunks that were popular in the 1970s. Last year, the hotel completed a total overhaul of their food and beverage outlets and opened the doors to its first-ever rooftop bar.

I first visited more than a half century after Bardot first walked through the doors — likely in much less glamorous circumstances. I was supposed to be staying somewhere that shall remain nameless on the opposite side of the Bay of Saint-Tropez, but it was so unspeakably awful (another story for another day) that we ran out in a panic and into the outspread arms of the team at Byblos.

My travel companion collapsed, quite literally, with relief and joy when we walked into our bedroom.

A handful of hotels on this Earth just get it right, exuding a kind of aura that intoxicates everyone who stays. It’s a tricky science and there are plenty of places that are perfect on paper, but leave guests feeling a bit, well, flat. Byblos falls into the former camp. It’s sexy, but not sleazy, and still feels like a closely-guarded secret despite its headline-making hedonistic history.

Oh if walls could talk!

The village-within-a-village, cloistered layout likely has a lot to do with that. However, the hotel’s back entrance spills guests out onto busy Avenue Foch — the best of both worlds.

Rooms at Hôtel Byblos start from €645 on a bed and breakfast basis in the low season, and on a room-only basis in peak season. Visit the website for more information and to book.

Greece has a, quite frankly, ridiculous number of islands — around 6,000 — that seemingly take it in polite turns to emerge from the shadows in order to advertise themselves to discerning travellers who don’t want to bump into their Chelsea neighbours on Corfu.

Kefalonia — of Captain Corelli’s Mandolin (1994) fame — is one of the old guard that has stood the test of time and the onslaught of fame, unlike Mykonos, Greece’s Ibiza, and Santorini, which had to impose a visitor cap in 2025 because of overtourism.

Even in peak season, the largest of the Ionian islands, feels manageable, relaxing even. As popular with honeymooners as it is with groups of friends and families.

Eliamos — a sanctum of 12 villas, positioned high up on a steep slope on the island’s southern curve — is a sure bet for the first two because the more famous sites (Myrtos Beach, Melissani cave, Argostoli, the capital) are situated further north.

Guests come here to stay put (for the majority of the time, at least) and rest. There’s a communal pool, bijou spa and open-sided restaurant, but the villa concept means that you don’t need to leave your room(s) if you don’t want to.

We — three girlfriends — stayed in a two-bedroom villa with a sleek stone open-plan kitchen, dining and living space at its heart. Floor-to-ceiling sliding doors opened up onto a terrace, private pool and, below, a sweep of cerulean-blue ocean that was, from time-to-time, studded with large yachts.

Though the villas were all designed by a London-based studio, they have a strong sense of place, unlike the beautiful garden which utilises all of the blank space between and around the buildings and is clearly English-inspired, reimagined for the egg yolk yellow Mediterranean sun. The frothy planting of Mexican fleabane, fragrant rosemary and fennel, is popular with local pollinators.

One morning we tumbled down the gravel track to a cove directly underneath the hotel (not as pretty as some of Kefalonia’s celebrated beaches, but we had it to ourselves); on another, we braved a (fun, I promise) personal training session in the open-air gym. The fact we couldn’t move the next day didn’t bother us one bit because we lay in the pool watching French Open matches on a precariously-balanced laptop.

The breakfast is worth leaving your room for and we made it our mission to try everything on the menu. Lunch and dinner are served in the same space — or you can order food to your room. The latter is quite formal, but staff happily recommended local favourites and leaving at least meant we utilised our hire car.

In recent years, fly-and-flop holidays have acquired an unsavoury reputation — perhaps because, in the wake of the Pandemic, travellers were urged to embrace bucket list adventures — but there is something necessary and nourishing about a holiday that can coax both the body and mind into a state of relaxation.

I know just the place — and now you do too.

Rooms at Eliamos start from €759 (about £650) on a bed and breakfast basis. Visit their website for more information and to book.

At dinner on my first night at Atelier Francis Mallmann, I watched as a pair of German bikers ordered the entire menu. It’s a common sight. The restaurant — in the small ranching town of Garzón — is chef Francis Mallmann’s flagship and has become a Mecca for people who travel on behalf of their appetites. Each breakfast, lunch and dinner is a chance to devour succulent grilled steaks, wood-oven empanadas, dulce de leche ice creams and the seasonal dishes that have secured his reputation as one of Latin America’s culinary greats.

Opened in 2003, on the site of a former general store, the hotel is also famous for revitalising Garzón, a forgotten, yet undeniably beautiful town in the heart of Uruguayan wine country that now an upscale culinary and artistic hub. There is a sculpture park, a myriad international art galleries and modern art residencies, including CAMPO Garzón.

The area is accessible by car or by a bus that, the driver’s mood permitting, departs for Montevideo on Tuesday mornings.

After a week by the coast, and on invitation from his daughter Allegra, I jumped at the chance to stay.

Like the German bikers, I was prepared to enact La Grande Bouffe (1973) on Mallmann’s menu, but, in the moments between those gluttonous sessions, my bungalow became a home and I fell for Garzón’s village life. ‘We wanted a place where people could feel at peace,’ said Mallmann.

I wandered the streets meeting the locals. Some were gallerists, photographers or architects — others friendly gauchos. I am still in touch with a few of them.

Atelier Francis Mallmann is laissez-faire luxury. The rooms are whitewashed, spacious and sparsely decorated — save for hallmarks such as bowls of fresh lemons.

There are two pools, both of which are heated, asado barbecues and outdoor kitchens. If I wanted five-star hotel service, all I had to do was make a quick call to reception, or strike up a conversation with a member of staff at breakfast, but I was just as able to disappear into the rhythms of village life at my own pace.

Mallmann was among the first to recognise Garzón’s charms. It has since been described as his ‘Macondo’, from Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s 100 Years of Solitude —a forgotten corner of the world revived by outsiders, where the heavy, peaceful silence is punctuated by bird song.

Like its fictional counterpart, Garzón is hard to leave. That trip, I extended my stay twice.

Rooms at Atelier Francis Mallmann start from $450 (about £335) per night. Visit the website for more information and to book.

I first visited Fouquet’s New York in late 2022, when it had just opened and memories of the havoc wreaked by the Pandemic were starting to fade. The mood in New York felt cautiously optimistic and I was buoyed by the fact that a) the hotel was busy and b) native New Yorkers were already congregating around the speakeasy-style bar. I didn’t know it then, but the launch would kickstart a tsunami-size wave of new hotel openings around the globe.

The hotel is on a cobbled street in downtown Greenwich, but feels decidedly French: from the Cannes-inspired cinema room (above), to the spa that echoes the small chain’s St Barths property.

The man behind the interiors isn’t French at all, but Swedish-born and London-based designer-of-the-last decade Martin Brudnizki. The rooms are all slightly different: sugary pink walls and a pistachio sofa in one; a French navy roll-top bath in a second; custom wallpaper covered in sketches of popular Manhattan and Parisian landmarks in a third.

I stayed for a second time in late 2025 and was delighted to find that little had changed, including the superb bespoke scent — Fugue a Paris — perfuming the lobby. An often overlooked way to make the best first impression.

The rooms

If, for whatever reason, you’ve ever wondered what it would feel like to live inside a macaroon, then look no further than Fouquet’s. I love the decidedly feminine, pastel-coloured bedrooms, but I expect they’re not for everyone. And that’s fine. They’re delicate and comfortable — but never childlike thanks to clever design decisions such as Art Deco inspired furniture and decor, and parquet flooring — and a welcome juxtaposition from the skyscrapers and harsh architecture lingering outside.

Some rooms overlook the Hudson River, and others, on the building’s corners, offer panoramic views of the city. All have marble bathrooms filled with Diptyque amenities.

Eating and drinking

There are three restaurants and a bar, including Brasserie Fouquet’s, a ground-floor-level outpost of the Fouquet’s in Paris (described by Country Life as ‘the Champs Élysées’ silver-screen canteen’, because it hosts the annual César Awards’ dinner and is regularly visited by A-list Hollywood celebrities).

In 2022, beret-wearing staff welcomed diners with greetings of ‘bonjour’ — a gimmick that they have, I’m happy to report, disposed of. It doesn’t need it; it’s popular as is, especially on the weekend, for brunch, with local Tribeca families and groups of friends. The onion soup is particularly popular, served with a pleasingly solid cheese lid.

The other options are Élysée's, which is open all day, and Le Vaux Rooftop, which is located atop the eight-story hotel and only open in the spring and summer months. They make a mean cocktail and the view is rather good too — especially framed by twinkling lights on a balmy New York summer evening.

How they’ll keep you busy

The spa is impressively comprehensive for a hotel of this size and place (there is a sauna, hammam and hydrotherapy pool). It’s well worth a visit and feels light and airy despite being underground. And it would be remiss of me not to mention the gym, which was designed in partnership with DOGPOUND, a cult New York and LA fitness brand that famously prepared Taylor Swift for her record-breaking ‘Eras’ tour. Go it alone with the top-of-the-line Technogym equipment or request a private training session with one of DOGPOUND’s specialist trainers. It is open 24 hours.

What else to do while you’re there

The West Side Highway, a 5.42-mile scenic road running alongside the Hudson River, is two blocks away; The Whitney Museum, with its impressive collection of 20th- and 21st-century American art, is a 25 minute walk.

Click here to read our complete guide to Manhattan, New York.

Who is it for?

I’ve always thought that the hotel’s soft glamour is best suited to small groups of girlfriends; when I was last there New York content creator Audrey Peters was enjoying a solo staycation, accompanied only by her sausage dog.

However, the massive penthouse and adjoining suites might appeal to families, though I’ve never seen any children in the lifts or outside of the restaurant.

What gives it the ‘wow’ factor

Fouquet’s has 97 bedrooms and suites, but it feels like an intimate, boutique-size hotel. There are always guests lingering in the lobby — key for atmosphere, I think — but I’ve never had to queue at the check-in desk or ever felt on top of anyone.

The one thing we’d change

The chocolate Arc de Triomphe waiting for you in your room when you first arrive. I eat the whole thing every single time because I have no willpower, and as lovely as they are, it doesn’t do my waistband any favours…

Room cost from $1,000 per night, based on two people sharing. Visit the Fouquet's website for more information and to book.

Whether in daylight or in darkness, beyond the glass of my expansive bedroom window lies a cornucopia of marvels.

Late into the night, long after my hot-water bottle has lost its punch and the fire in the wood-burning stove has dwindled to ash, I can lie in my bed and watch the progress of a waning moon through the sky.

I can see the blackened outline of trees and wooded ridges and, beyond, a horizon of high mountains, their snow-capped peaks washed purple in moon shadow. I can see the stars, almost as clearly as if I were outside lying beneath them.

When dawn breaks, the pink rays of sunrise hit the highest summits first — a slow reveal of Himalayan magnificence unfolding with the light, accompanied by an enthusiastic sound-bath of early-morning birdsong. Someone taps on the door and I am brought a tray of tea and biscuits — bed-tea, they call it, for obvious reasons — to ease my passage into the new day.

No need to raise the blinds, however. I never closed them. Why would I, when the roof of the world is right outside my window?

The mighty Nanda Devi — a sacred mountain and India’s second highest after Kanchenjunga — forms one section of my view, segueing into the five dramatic peaks of the Panchachuli range.

All, as the hallowed preserve of Hindu Gods, are off limits to climbers and adventurers, but where the feet can’t walk the eye can certainly travel. For Shakti Prana, a remote, new, seven-bedroom lodge in the Kumaon region of Uttarakhand, these mountains and this view are the crux of its existence.

However, the story starts long before my trip (in 2025). It goes back to the time when a young Jamshyd Sethna was sent from Bombay to boarding school in Darjeeling where his love of the mountains took root; and to the time, several decades later, when he founded Shakti Himalaya, a series of culturally immersive walking holidays in three remote, mountainous regions of India — Sikkim, Ladakh and Kumaon — each one linked by small, beautifully restored or purpose-built village houses where guests can indulge in off-the-beaten track adventures, but with none of the hardship.

The houses are all exquisitely appointed with sumptuously comfortable bedrooms and teams of staff to ensure the highest levels of service, despite the often near-inaccessible nature of their locations.

On the Kumaon circuit, the most celebrated of the houses was always Shakti 360˚ at Leti, a dramatic, four-bedroom lodge set on a vertiginous plateau high above the Ramganga River. When problems set in with the lease of the land, however, a decision was made to strike camp and to move Leti piece by piece to an even more spectacular site, not far as the crow flies, where the views of the mountains are far superior and where there was space to create a bigger, more luxurious lodge.

Over the course of a mere 11 months, Leti was reborn as Prana (above), a passion project if ever there was one, but undoubtedly the new jewel in Shakti’s crown.

My journey begins in Delhi after a few days touring the sights of Rajasthan (there seems little sense in coming all the way to India without embellishing the Shakti experience with a longer, fuller trip to make the air miles more worthwhile).

The monsoon rains are dying their last breath as we board the hour’s flight to Pantnagar in Uttarakhand, but the promise of finer weather looks assured for the next few days. Autumn and mid-winter are the best times for mountain views because the light and air are clear and sharp; spring, however, brings the rhododendrons in technicolour bursts of red and pink.

Prana, a 10-hour, helter-skelter drive from Pantnagar, is unreachable in a single hop; guests must break the journey at one, or all, of Shakti’s other Kumaon village houses. We go for all, believing in the slow crescendo of a build-up and a deeper immersion into the region’s rural communities.

The traditional style of Shakti Kana, our first stop, belies the extent of its restoration: a brick façade with deep-blue shuttered windows, a flight of steps to the front door, three deeply comfortable bedrooms and a sitting room where the warmth from a wood-burning stove offsets the lingering drizzle outside.

We are in the heart of the village on a steep terraced hillside, small areas of pasture fashioned from precarious slivers of level ground. Villagers, young and old, greet us as we wind a slippery path through their homesteads, unabashed at the uncommon sight of Westerners and eager to say hello.

In the morning, we leave on foot, our masterful guide Pujan leading us on a long, scenic walk, up, up to unfurl the first distant glimpse of snow-capped Himalaya; down, down through a sacred forest of deodar cedars to a river valley and the 8th-century Jageshwar Temple to pay homage to Lord Shiva.

As if by magic, lunch appears in a wooded glade: a chequered-clothed table, salads and sticky carrot cake, plus refreshing tea delivered by the Shakti support team who slip into nowhere as we eat.

Then on, legs beginning to tire, the view opening and closing as we walk, uniformed schoolchildren sharing our path on their way home to their villages, women bent double with the weight of cut grass or dried wood on their backs.

Finally, a narrow path leads us down to our next abode, Jwalabanj Village House, more isolated than Kana, but every bit as comfortable, a chill evening mist licking the tops of the trees, hot-water bottles warming the beds, gin and tonics at the ready.

We save the third village house for our return journey, batting instead straight to Prana by car. It’s a wild, white-knuckle ride as we career for five hours on narrow roads in a spiralling vortex of barrierless drops. Buses, lorries, motorbikes, pedestrians and animals — some-how we dodge them all, our driver a demon behind the wheel, negotiating our route through the beautiful Binsar Wildlife Sanctuary and the thrumming riverside town of Bageshwar until we are dropped at a roadhead, no lodge in sight.

There’s a reason for this. Shakti Prana is only accessible on foot via a rough mule track that ascends steeply uphill for 45 minutes — a natural filter, you might say, for determining the type of guest who will reap the most from staying here.

The rewards, however, are mani-fold. Here is that soul-filling view, here are the seven individual suites crafted into the hillside for minimum impact out of stone, copper, glass and wood combined in elemental sophistication — a modern aesthetic delivered with ancient building materials and techniques.

‘This is quite something, isn’t it?’ sighs Jamshyd contentedly as we sit around the dining-room table one evening and the delightful chef, Yeshi, a former Tibetan monk, conjures up yet another masterpiece of Indian home cooking. Communal eating is not a pre-requisite, but excellent food certainly is.

Our days are spent with Pujan, exploring on foot many of the tiny village communities that cling to these precipitous hillsides. We are wrapped in smiles, invited into homes, proffered fresh cucumber sprinkled with chilli and Himalayan salt and handed mugs of warm milk drawn straight from the cow. The children, shy at first, grow in confidence, brandishing their mobile phones and testing out their English. It’s a world apart, but strangely, simultaneously, a world connected.

At barely more than 6,000ft, Prana presents few problems with altitude, but vertigo is often only a whisper away. Walks are always tailored to guests by their respective guides — a Shakti holiday, after all, is a deeply personalised experience—but they can be challenging. Our longest, some 10 miles or so, starts out on the high ridge above the lodge, the glistening massif of Panchachuli rising beside us.

A breathtaking circuit of near-vertical hillsides follows as we teeter along narrow paths, scurry beneath waterfalls, picnic in mossy woodland and haul ourselves back to the top. In the sauna and bathhouse at Prana, tired limbs are soothed and we feel like epic adventurers. If only there were time for more.

Our reluctant departure from Prana is tempered only by the promise of one last surprise, Panchachuli Village House (above), the final pit stop to break the journey back to Pantnagar. This house is new, too; less lauded than Prana, but a showstopper in its own right.

The three thatched bedroom cabins, set above a central stone village house, are also accessible only on foot — this time a mere 25 minutes from the road, but still another deep dive into a landscape peppered with brightly coloured houses, small temples, grass-land and forest.

Through the vast picture windows in yet another exquisite Shakti bedroom, I watch as the light fades, as wood-smoke curls up from the valley below and as the far horizon of mighty peaks is swallowed by the night sky for the final time.

cazenove+loyd can organise nine-night itineraries (seven nights with Shakti and two nights at The Imperial New Delhi hotel on a bed-and-breakfast basis) from £8,600 per person.

The Shakti journey to Kumaon comprises four nights in villa houses and three nights at Shakti Prana on a full-board basis and the price includes activities, an accompanying English-speaking guide, support guide, porters and a car, plus return domestic flights between Delhi and Pantnagar and airport transfers in Delhi.

This feature originally appeared in the January 7, 2026, issue of Country Life. Click here for more information on how to subscribe

Siargao, a tear-shaped island in the south-eastern Philippines, is known for its surfing, yet, with its tangle of palm forests, fishing villages and jade-green lagoons, it feels like Bali before the beach clubs. Here, there’s still a sense of real life, where bikes weave past pastel-painted houses, children splash in the shallows and fishermen cast nets at sunrise.

Nay Palad Hideaway sits between the sea and the mangroves. Formerly Dedon Island Resort, it was rebuilt after the 2022 typhoon Odette by its owner, Dedon founder Bobby Dekeyser, and French architect Daniel Pouzet, who worked with local craftspeople to restore what was lost. Much was made by hand on the island — from the timber beams and woven thatch to the sculptural rattan and shell details.

The resort unfolds in the manner of a small village. Foliage weaves its way around villas, set amid private gardens, shady terraces and pools. There are no televisions and the WiFi is patchy — wonderfully irrelevant when the sun shines, but mildly challenging when it rains. When the weather does behave, there’s almost too much to do, from kayaking through the mangrove channels to island-hopping to the nearby islets of Daku and Guyam for picnics on the sand. Those on the island to surf should make for Cloud 9, the legendary break that put Siargao on the map.

One of the loveliest ways to see the island is by Jeepney, the open-sided minibuses that are a national symbol of the Philippines. Nay Palad’s version is a chic take on the original, crowned with what looks like a Moses basket. Jump inside the basket for a tour, stopping wherever you like. If you prefer to explore under your own steam, there are bikes to ride past emerald rice paddies and coconut groves.

When the rainclouds do gather, the place doesn’t lose its magic — WiFi aside. In the spa, the soothing soundtrack of falling rain soon becomes part of your treatment. The menu includes Filipino hilot massages, hot-stone treatments and coconut-oil scrubs — and you can book as many as you want. Once a term that brought to mind bland breakfast buffets, ‘all inclusive’ has been entirely redefined here. There are no bills to sign, merely the simple and seamless pleasure of knowing you can have whatever you want, whenever you want.

The food offering changes daily: breakfast might be mango pancakes or sinangag rice with fried egg and local longanisa sausage; lunch and dinner is normally fish, caught that day. If you crave something that isn’t on the menu, the team will happily whip it up. Nothing here is ever too much trouble.

Rooms at Nay Palad Hideaway, the Philippines, start at $890 (about £660) per night for a two-bedroom Garden View villa on a full-board basis. For more information and to book, visit the Nay Palad website.

Luxury follows you wherever you go in the French Riviera. Mansions and châteaux occupy prime spots on the hills, placed to gaze out over the sparkling Mediterranean and the priceless yachts that cruise lazily up and down the coast. In between, the towns and villages of this idyllic part of Europe present themselves as traditionally as they can; the illusion only broken by signs that read CHANEL, Dior, Hermes and more.

But what is luxury, really?

For many people, it’s a logo, a number at the bottom of a receipt, the latest technology, an overcomplicated menu of froths and deconstruction. For the Hôtel du Couvent, a Luxury Collection hotel, it is none of these things. At this 88-room former convent tucked into a hillside overlooking Nice’s old town, luxury is guided by two defining principles — decadence and joy.

Originally built by the Order of Saint Claire in the early 17th century, the four buildings that make up this hillside sanctuary have been sensitively restored and refurbished under the watchful eye of Valéry Grégo and Perseus Properties. It’s hard to imagine that, apart from the lights, the lift and a few plugs, much has changed. The central courtyard, dressed in a sympathetic palette of earthy yellow and cream, is shaded by orange trees and, on first glance, feels curiously austere. So too the corridors, where well-trodden flagstone floors have largely been left as is, and where, behind heavy wooden doors, you will find the rooms. It’s a space that demands quiet reflection and contemplation; it elicits respect, not only for what came before, but for what a holiday really is, which is to be at rest.

Hôtel du Couvent understands luxury by engaging the senses. Touch the rough walls, smell the gardens, the bakery, the herbalist. Your eyes will absorb a story from the antiques and oddities associated with property’s past life. You can hear the breeze blowing in from the ocean and the gulls gently swinging overhead. In the rooms, it’s emphasised by vast antique rainfall shower heads in the bathroom, controlled by thick taps, where the water feels heavy. It’s a double bed covered with hefty linen, dramatic shutters that swing over the windows, a well-stocked minibar and a terrace with dramatic views over Nice and the Riviera beyond.

To relax, wind your way up the hillside, through terraces of herbs, flowers and fresh produce to a swimming pool that seems to stretch over the entire city. Or wind your way down into the unpretentious spa, where baths hidden in the catacombs will try and cure every ache and pain, mental or physical. And then find joy in the food, all of which is drawn from the hotel’s gardens or nearby farm. Freshly baked croissants in the morning, served with eggs from the in-house hen team. A towering pan bagnat for lunch. Dinner in either Le Restaurant du Couvent, serving a delightful formal Savoyard menu, or the more laid-back and local Le Bistrot des Serruriers. Simplicity is the key to all three — the only ‘story’ that the chefs will try to tell you with their food is that it is rustic, delicious, and that you should leave feeling full. Every crunch, slurp and bite is a reminder of the power of organic local ingredients, and that flavour should be big and bold.

Hôtel du Couvent is everything that luxury should be: decadent, joyful, and unfussy. A holy trinity. Who needs a Hermès handbag or a superyacht when you can have thick chunks of the best bread you’ve ever eaten, served with salty butter and a glass of rosé, under the Mediterranean sun. Centuries ago, the nuns of Nice found peace and completion within these walls. You can still find it there now.

Rooms at Hôtel du Couvent cost from €330 per night (about £300). For more information and to book, visit the hotel du Couvent website.

On Tuesdays, everyone on Mustique gathers in the Great Room — a glamorous, open-sided bar-cum-living room designed by Oliver Messel that is the beating heart of Cotton House hotel — for canapés and Champagne. The barmen serve up cocktails that fall just on the right side of lethal, games tables dot the space ready for the regular backgammon sessions and pictures of Colin Tennant, 3rd Baron Glenconner, who brought the Caribbean island into the limelight, hang on the walls. It all looks like the child of a London members’ club and a Caribbean beach bar.

The Cotton House is Mustique’s only hotel and its small curve of beach is the only one with a restaurant on it (the tuna tacos are a firm favourite with everyone who stays). Swim out a little way — or launch yourself off the wooden jetty — and you’ll spy the villa of Lawrence Stroll (part-owner and executive chairman of Aston Martin and owner of Aston Martin Aramco Formula One Team) to your left.

Don your snorkel, turn to the right and you’ll find yourself suspended above a coral nursery and, if your lucky, green sea turtles. This is the domain of Kate Charles, Mustique’s on-island conservation officer, who is hoping to reverse the effects of a 2023 bleaching event and 2024 hurricane.

There are currently 17 bedroom suites and cottages, arranged in an non-linear fashion throughout 13 acres of tropical gardens patrolled by non-native tortoises. I arrived in the dark and didn’t clock the animals until the following morning — when one that I’d passed off as an oval boulder hoicked itself up onto its stumpy, orange-spotted legs and waddled off across the grass in search of hibiscus flowers for breakfast. Every room has a private verandah; some even have plunge pools. Hot off the press: the already charming rooms are soon to have a makeover to bring them in line with the phenomenal new spa that opened in late 2025. Designed in beautiful homage to Messel’s original villas, it has its own ‘Great Room’ where manicure and pedicures take place, alongside a coffee station, a bamboo-lined hair salon (manned by John Vial of Salon Sloane, London SW3), several treatment rooms and a dangerously well-curated shop stocked full of treasures from Anya Hindmarch and Annoushka.

Turquoise Holidays can organise seven-night stays at the Cotton House from £3,350 per person. The price includes international flights to Barbados, onward flights from Barbados to Mustique, airport transfers and accommodation in a Garden Cottage on a bed and breakfast basis. Valid for stays from May 1 to July 14, 2026.

Badrutt’s Palace — one of three hotels that rule, unofficially, over the Swiss mountain resort of St Moritz (the other two are the Kulm and Suvretta House) — pipped Country Life to the post by a single year. It opened right in the heart of the town in 1896; the first Country Life appeared on the newsstand in 1897. The hotel featured regularly in the magazine’s early travel and advertising pages — and both have gone on to be institutions in their respective fields.

Despite being the beating heart of St Moritz’s jet-set social scene (it is closely associated with some of the most important dates on the resort’s calendar, including the annual ICE event), Badrutt’s has never kowtowed to pressure to conform to what so many people seem to desire from five-star hotels. The kind of pressure that has wrecked so many other fantastic properties and turned them into shiny, identikit versions of each other. It helps that the Badrutt’s brand is unfailingly consistent. It knows who it is and it’s not trying to be anyone else or chase hospitality trends, changing enough each year to stay relevant without putting off regular guests.

The rooms

The hotel has 159 rooms and all of them have a view of the lake or town centre. The most talked-about addition is the recently-opened Serlas Wing — a collaboration between Italian architect Antonio Citterior and Loro Piana Interiors. It is in a separate building, on the other side of the street from the central Palace and connected via an underground tunnel that also ferries guests to Chesa Veglia, a historic Engadine farmhouse built in 1658 that now operates as a rustic restaurant (banker banker Harry Morgan went to the opening party in 1935).

The Serlas Wing is a modern, grey cuboid of a building with designer boutiques on the ground floor. It could have felt entirely disconnected from the original, Gothic-inspired building and its turrets and wood-panelled walls, but someone very clever has united the architectural and interior styles with flashes of red, including the window frames and cut-out wooden detailing on the upper storeys of the old building and the window awnings on the new one.

Our room felt more like a private residence than something belonging to a hotel with ample storage space, including a walk-through wardrobe, a separate living room and an emphasis on texture to help soften the grey and red tones (think woollen and cashmere headboard, curtains and cushions). The Palace’s rooms are more classical; they have a lighter colour palette, elegant, Shaker-style panelling and gold lamps and picture frames.

Eating and drinking

Alarm bells typically start ringing in my head when I arrive at a hotel to find that there are four or more food and beverage outlets. Something about it screams of all-inclusive buffets and a desire to stop you venturing outside to explore — and spending your money somewhere else. But here, despite the 11 restaurants and three bars and clubs, the alarm bells were silent.

It helps that 1) they’re all wildly different and 2) that each offering is executed to perfection — often with a difference. In the Le Grand Hall, the dinner menu includes an array of exemplary Indian cuisine; in Le Relais almost every dish is prepared tableside including my favourite pudding, crêpes suzette, which might just rival the ones served at The Ritz London.

There’s also a Matsuhisa outpost to satisfy guests who crave consistency and seek comfort in knowing exactly what they will get regardless of where they go in the world — but even with this they’ve managed to overdeliver, by building the restaurant in the hotel’s former tennis hall (one of Europe’s earliest indoor tennis courts).

Paradiso Mountain Club & Restaurant — situated a way above the hotel, on the slopes — is popular with guests and passing skiers alike. It’s designed for unabashed fun with lively, resident DJs, panoramic views and, of course, a disco ball.

However, Badrutts’ pièce de résistance is the Renaissance Bar, helmed by the magnificent Matteo Oddo who, three years ago, stumbled upon rows of forgotten, storied spirits and wines in the dusty cellars. A bottle of honey liquor, bottled, according to its label, in 1870 was in perfect condition thanks to the subterranean room’s steady temperature and dim light. A carefully curated selection of cocktails, made using some of these rediscovered alcohols, are available to sample in the bar, including the ‘St Moritz Whisky Cocktail’ — Matteo’s favourite to make.

How they’ll keep you busy

The hotel operates nearly year-round (the summer months are becoming increasingly popular, especially with repeat guests) and has an impressive roster of activities to keep all types of travellers happy.

There is a spa with an enviable indoor-outdoor swimming pool (above) that’s level with the treetops meaning when you’re in it, your line of sight skims the canopy to catch the lake beyond. And there are high-altitude tennis and padel courts and instructors on hand to help you perfect your backhand. In the winter months, the in-house ski and snowboard shop can kit you up for a day on the slopes.

Last year, they collaborated with Mesa, a local yoga studio who host regular, gentle practices and meditation sessions.

What else to do while you’re here

Carriage rides, snow-shoeing, shopping, people-watching, helicopter tours… the list goes on and on.

Make time to walk around the picturesque lake which is often veiled in a gossamer-thin mist first thing in the morning.

Who’s it for?

Everyone. Part of the joy of Badrutt’s is that some people come down to dinner in ballgowns and others in puffa jackets (albeit Moncler ones). Surprisingly — for a hotel that attracts such a wealthy clientele (more than 50% of them arrive by private jet) — no one is putting on an act and seem genuinely happy to be here.

What gives it the ‘wow ‘factor?

1) The staff — all of whom you can tell look proud to work at the hotel, and 2) how relaxing a stay here feels, even when operating at a high-occupancy rate (which is most of the time).

The one thing we’d change

I’ve been sitting here, staring at my notes and laptop screen for five minutes, and haven’t been able to come up with anything…

Rooms at Badrutt's Palace Hotel start from £1,020 a night. Visit the hotel's website for more information and to book.

Sopwell House has few faults. It’s ideally located in the greenery of St Albans, Hertfordshire — a charming cathedral city — and easily accessible from London on the trusty Thameslink, which gives it two big green ticks in my book. I checked in for a girls’ weekend with my step-mother for some much needed R&R before Christmas.

The rooms

Our room was clean and spacious — albeit rather close to the car park. With a magnificent-looking bath in the en suite that I sadly didn’t get enough time to use, a gloriously cosy bed and an ample dressing table, it was hard to find fault. An outdoor seating area attached would have been the perfect place to sit and catch up, or simply watch the world go by with a cup of tea, had the world not been a chilly 2ºC during our stay. The complimentary macaroons went down very easily, as did the complimentary bottle of gin, which came with tonic and grapefruit slices. This was a thoughtful touch and made for the perfect getting-ready drinks as we chose our outfits and put on our make up before going down for dinner that evening.

Eating and drinking

There are two restaurants to choose from at Sopwell House, The more traditional option, The Brasserie, or Omboo — an asian fusion offering. Having had enough Asian-fusion food to last me a lifetime in recent weeks (it seems to be the thing that’s trendy right now) we opted for the Brasserie. I had scallops in butter and garlic to start and my dinner-partner had the smoked salmon: both utterly enjoyable. For my main I had a steak, and polished off with a further gin and tonic for good measure. The food was very good, but there was nothing on the menu to write home about. However, Sopwell House is a spa hotel, not a fine-dining one, so this was to be expected, and we enjoyed a very tasty meal.

How they’ll keep you busy

The spa — the main reason to stay at Sopwell House. There are two options to choose from: The Cottonmill spa and The Club at Cottonmill. The latter is an option worth paying extra for. It comes with a superior steam room, sauna, plenty of indoor space to relax and, the pièce de résistance, the outdoor amenities, which you cannot access if you are only visiting the Cottonmill spa. The highlight of my visit was enjoying a cup of orange blossom tea in an outdoor jacuzzi, which we had all to ourselves, as the stars shone above us. However, this was marred slightly when ‘All I Want For Christmas Is You’ was blasted out into the cool night air, breaking the previous calm of the gentle spa tunes. It took a bit of an auditory sledgehammer to our zen vibes, truth be told. Also marring the vibes: the wristbands we needed to get into the outdoor, more exclusive, part of the spa. Regular wristbands deny you entry at the door, making for a somewhat awkward experience if you’ve not paid the extra fee, and the unwanted rubber bangle is reminiscent of a tacky all-inclusive — distinctly not chic. It also implies a certain mistrust of the hotel guests. Most law-abiding visitors would, surely, stick to the part they have paid for. Otherwise it was magical.

What else to do while you’re there

Visit St Albans Cathedral. When we went, a local choir was rehearsing for a carol concert, which lent the experience a magical quality in the way that only voices joined in song, and amplified by a certain kind of acoustics, can. The building itself was very impressive (and I say that as someone who hails from Canterbury, which in my mind is home to the final boss of English cathedrals). It was free to visit and the guides were extremely helpful and pointed out all sorts of quirks and oddities as we looked around. For example, one of the shrines that was reconstructed in 2020 has a masked figure that was added as a tribute to the pandemic era, which you can spy if you look closely in the right place. Well worth a trip.

Who’s it for

The girls.

What gives it the wow factor

Swimming into the outdoor pool at night and stargazing from one of the surrounding jacuzzis.

The one thing we’d change

Apart from the wristbands and the playlist — easily fixed — the milk in our room was long life. Although there was a sign informing us that we could ring down to reception to have some fresh milk brought up, given we had a mini fridge I think it would have been nicer if it had been included from the off. But that really is me being incredibly picky.

Insider tip

Order breakfast to be delivered to your room in the morning — the ultimate luxury lie-in.

For more information on Sopwell House, and to book a room, see their website.

In an influential 2016 essay entitled Welcome to AirSpace, the American cultural critic Kyle Chayka defined a look which has become so prolific in hospitality that it’s led to a global march of coffee shops, co-working spaces and restaurants ‘that share the same hallmarks everywhere you go’. When it comes to hotels I’m sure you can picture the sort I mean: reclaimed industrial spaces with poured concrete floors or parquet, lots of plants, terrazzo bathrooms, Eames-adjacent chairs and a smattering of jewel-toned crushed velvet. Oh, and super-fast WiFi, the better to document your stay on social media.

There’s nothing wrong with any of this — it’s a package I’ve sought out in various cities over the years when travelling for work, precisely because you know what you’re getting. But it keeps you in a bubble: however many miles you are from home it can feel as though you haven’t really gone anywhere at all. As Kyle puts it, ‘as the geography of AirSpace spreads, so does a certain sameness’ — for all its comfort and convenience, this algorithmically codified aesthetic is making getaways (whisper it) a bit boring. Basic, even.

Thank goodness, then, for the Seaside Boarding House, a converted Edwardian villa overlooking Chesil Beach that’s a real breath of fresh (sea) air. Certainly it’s stylish, with its reclaimed wooden floors, crisp organic bedding and walls painted in seafoam shades. The bar will do you a textbook flat white, and your negroni will come with a modish bowl of Perello olives. But said cocktail is brought to you in a proper drawing room, with a crackling fire surrounded by shelves stocked with the likes of Anthony Powell and local boy Thomas Hardy. The ceiling lights are brass pre-war originals, the bannisters came from a ship. This is the sort of place where you can expect to see a toast rack (complimentary).

Even if the Seaside Boarding House had gone a bit heavier on the succulents and rose gold, its setting would make it impossible to mistake for anywhere else in the world. The building, originally one of a pair of houses owned by members of the Pitt-Rivers family, commands a remarkable position above the sand, offering views from Portland Bill all the way over to Star Point. In the summer it’s packed, the terrace doing a roaring trade in rosé, but on a winter weekend it’s a glorious place to hunker down and admire the ever-changing waves. If you’re lucky you might spot a dolphin.

The hotel is the brainchild of Mary-Lou Sturridge, former managing director of the Groucho Club, which led one reviewer to ever so slightly sniffily dub it ‘Groucho-on-Sea’. We see no evidence of this: along with half a dozen weekending couples from around the country there’s a steady stream of locals and their dogs stopping off for coffee on the way home from a tramp along the South West Coast Path, which runs right past the hotel. Some return, sans sandy boots, for dinner in the lovely, Michelin-recommended dining room, whose tables are set with antique crockery and silverware and fresh flowers.

Seafood, unsurprisingly, is the kitchen’s focus, and the hand-picked crab, carrot and Melba toast is an easy yes, although we give very serious consideration to a twice-baked cheese souffle which our server confides they ‘can never take off the menu’. Wild sea bass with red cabbage and peppercorn sauce is superb, elegant without being fussy and accompanied by a moreish mountain of new potatoes tumbled in seaweed butter. For pudding we share a malt creme brulee and a chocolate mousse which is easily the best either of us has ever tried, beating even the legendary one from Chapon’s mousse au chocolat bar in Paris.

The next morning we wake to the sound of the waves and acres of blue filling the bay window. A quick call to the front desk and two coffees materialise discreetly on a silver tray outside our door (the team here are fantastic, friendly and consummately helpful). There are no televisions in the rooms, which I love, although you can switch on your Roberts Radio if you really can’t do without the news. I opt to ease into the day by lying in the claw-footed bath looking out at the sea. Downstairs, breakfast feels like the best sort of country-house hospitality, with a buffet table laden with freshly baked scones, banana bread, yoghurts, poached fruits and homemade granola. The hot options are pleasingly retro: think boiled eggs with anchovy-toast soldiers, and excellent kippers.

If you’ve brought a car, Bridport, with its antiquing opportunities, is just 10 minutes away. We came by rail and South West Trains regrettably abbreviated our visit, but if we’d had more time we’d have been setting out for a long, blustery walk on the beach, perhaps stopping off at lunchtime at the nearby Hive Beach Cafe for the catch of the day. We happily holed up in front of the fire instead, the team practically having to prise us out of the armchairs when it was time to leave. The Seaside Boarding House is something so many ‘AirSpace’ hotels claim to be, but are emphatically not: a home from home.

Rooms from £265 a night on a bed-and-breakfast basis. Visit The Seaside Boarding House’s website for more information and to book.

The word perfect is often abused, but there are few better ways to describe the interiors at Château de la Messardière, a fairy-tale building on the outskirts of St Tropez.

Its size is deceptive; the architecture, layout and landscaping cleverly designed so it’s impossible to get a complete view from outside, despite the prominent, hilltop position.

Some of the bedrooms and suites are in the main hotel — approached via a long driveway that gives little away — others in pale ochre-coloured buildings set around a shimmering swimming pool. Seemingly single storey, these smaller structures are built into the hillside and drop away on the other side, concealing more rooms and a peaceful spa. There’s another, quieter lap pool, hidden amid the herb-filled gardens.

Château de la Messardière is part of the Airelles group’s latest acquisition (the sister hotels in Gordes, Val d’Isère and Versailles are equally pretty and a hotel in Venice is slated to open this spring) and 2022 was its first full season, following a glamorous transformation.

We stayed in the white, wood-panelled Deluxe Suite with its generously sized separate sitting and dining room, walk-through dressing room and feminine French bedroom. There are dual-aspect views, to St Tropez on one side and Pampelonne on the other. The attention to detail everywhere is unparalleled, from the linen-covered shelves to the contrasting white piping on the pinky-peach upholstery.

Guests can escape to Jardin Tropézina, the hotel’s private beach club, in a complimentary Rolls-Royce shuttle, but we preferred to sit among the potted olive trees at 1904, the all-day dining, poolside restaurant. There’s ice cream for pudding, served from a cart at your sun lounger. Other options include French fine dining at Les Délices du Pan Deï or pan-Asian cuisine at Matsuhisa Saint-Tropez.

Château de la Messardière reopens for the summer season on April 24, 2026. Superior Rooms from €1,250 a night. The price includes breakfast, sunbeds at Jardin Tropézina club and transfers to the beach and town centre. Visit the Airelles website for more information and to book.

If you’ve visited any of the Royal Mansour properties, you’ll likely have picked up on their unique charm — from the sprawling and spotless oasis of the Marrakech hotel, to the urban, Art Deco design of the Casablanca one. At Tamuda Bay, there are plenty of selling points — a serene and sandy beach from which you can spy superyachts, three fine dining restaurants and intricate tiling (I found myself hypnotised by our bathroom wall) — but it’s the medi-spa that really sets it apart. The first of its kind in Morocco.

Banish thoughts of a few, white-washed subterranean rooms; this 4,300sq m building (for context, that’s not far off the size of The White House) houses a rabbit warren of treatment rooms, pools, thermal spaces with hammans, saunas, steam rooms and more, fitness spaces, meditation spots and relaxation zones. The decor — in keeping with its surroundings — is intricate and luxurious. Think leaf-shape tiles, towering ceilings and a twinkling light display above the impressive swimming pool. Even the fluffy spa slippers are on theme — elongated to a point in similar style to traditional Moroccan shoes.

As flashy as the interiors are, this is not some show-pony project, but a space in which guests can immerse themselves in the hotel’s exclusive Longevity Programme — a 7-14 day health camp of sorts that focuses on living better longer (rather than weight loss or physical change, though these are common side effects). Combining medical expertise with holistic traditions (including acupuncture, sound healing and osteopathy) and led by a team of doctors including the impressive Dr Benzouina, a Paris-trained dermatologist by trade who is passionate about a 360-degree approach to health, the goal of the programme is to send guests home feeling physically and mentally healthier — and with new habits and knowledge to enable further improvements long after they’ve left.

The concept is based on five pillars — nutrition, sleep, physical activity, metabolic rates and emotional wellbeing — and a series of on-boarding tests, from blood takes to weigh ins, a grueling physical and Ayurvedic stress analysis to give your doctors a clear picture of where things are lacking, need nudging along, or are in dire straits. You’ll have the results in your hand less than 24 hours after you’ve been prodded and questioned, plus a plan which — I promise — isn’t scarily strict because you can opt out of certain things, such as strict meal plans, cryotherapy and acupuncture. This isn’t about hard or fast results — though even on 850 calories a day, I found the food such as cured salmon with shaved fennel, and baked eggs with local spices, delicious — but making a few strides in the right direction with a team of professionals holding your hand.

That doesn’t sound so bad, does it?

Rooms from 7,000MAD (about £560) for two people sharing a Deluxe Suite on a bed and breakfast basis. Visit the Royal Mansour website for more information and to book.

Bucharest is an ugly city until it isn’t. The last 150 years have not been kind; from the Ottomans, to the Nazis, to the Soviet Union, the city and its people have suffered and, for a long time on the drive from the airport to its centre, that scarring is reflected in the buildings that line the streets. Grey, concrete, forlorn and forgotten.

But then it changes. The Soviet cement falls away, and a melange of medieval, Art Nouveau, Art Deco and neo-Classical elegance emerges from this chrysalis of oppression that has been surrounding Romania’s capital for generations. So much history has happened here and so much remains, and it is delightful. It is not obvious why they call it ‘Little Paris’, until it is.

All roads into Bucharest seem to lead to the Grand Hotel du Boulevard. Indeed, it is older than most of the roads, opening its doors in 1873 and drawing urban life to it. It was the first building in the city to have electricity, running water and a lift, and has long been the centre of culture here, receiving dignitaries such as Queen Victoria, Franz Josef and Constantin Brâncuși. Like many of the grand dames of Europe, she has seen and survived it all, ever present in a shifting political and socioeconomic landscape of this unshackled Eastern European democracy. For 10 years she lay silent, as she was redeveloped and restored by Corinthia Hotels and NIRO Investment Group, and reopened in March as a 30-suite triumph that is not only designed to be the very height of luxury, but a planted flag in the Romanian consciousness, one that says: ‘Anything you can do, we can do too.'

On the surface, the evidence is compelling. Here is a building that wouldn’t look out of place in Paris, Vienna or Monaco. The neo-Classical façade is iridescent, and the interiors rival anything you will see in New York, Milan or London, with shades of cream and gold, mixed with the hotel’s in house scent Elysee, dragging the senses to a world of Art Nouveau comfort that follows you wherever you go.

But the proof can be found in the staff, many of whom left Romania to work in high-end hospitality around the world, but have returned to elevate what they believe is the country’s first real effort in high-end luxury. It’s one thing being served dinner or drinks by someone being paid, and quite another by someone who walked out of a Four Seasons elsewhere to show you just how good life in Bucharest can be if you put your mind to it.

It’s a big swing from Corinthia and NIRO. Is Bucharest, so long in the minds of the English, just another eastern European city ripe for a stag weekend, ready to relaunch itself as one of Europe’s premier destinations? Let loose from the grip of barbarism, it is certainly trying its very hardest, and the Corinthia Grand Hotel du Boulevard is ready to shoulder the weight.

The rooms

In a word — vast. As mentioned, the hotel is nothing but suites, 30 of them, and while I didn’t see every one, the ones I did were all spacious as to be absurd. The bathrooms are a symphony of marble. Plush cream and the softest fabrics everywhere. A bed that could be used as a basketball court and springy enough to make slam dunks a cinch. Just the right amount of gold so as to be fancy without being ostentatious.

Floral hints and accents are almost everywhere, a nod to the Romanian poet Mihai Eminescu, and make a nice contrast to the urban environment in which you are staying. Thankfully, the good people at Corinthia have found just the right balance between technology and tradition. I liked that the curtains open and close at the touch of a button. I loved that traditional light switches haven’t been removed for one of those infuriating multi-control screens.

Eating and drinking

The making of any decent hotel, especially one with aspirations as grand as this one, is having a good bar. Thankfully, the Grand Hotel has two. The Heritage Bar has a tremendous selection of signature cocktails and spirits, with an atmosphere as elegant as a European classic and none of the snootiness. The room is split beautifully into a central space interspersed with quiet little alcoves, perfect for whispered conversations, business dealings, and hushed affairs.

Sass’ Restaurant and Lounge is more for the party people, drawing inspiration from the eponymous Monaco brand and bedecked in chinoiserie panels, leopard print and lots and lots of red. If the Heritage bar is largo, this is all out allegro. When I visited, the movers and the shakers of Bucharest were pouring in and out, ready to start whatever parties they had planned for the later hours.

Fine dining can be found in Boulevard 73, which is helmed by Portuguese chef Pedro Mendes and is served in the domed ballroom that occupies the heart of the hotel. Formerly the courtyard, it is now the home of a superb menu of Portuguese, French and Romanian fusion. Don’t miss out on the caviar and Champagne.

Can I watch any polo matches while I’m there?

What a strange question, but the answer is yes. As mentioned, Romania is very much making an effort to move on from ‘stag do and cheap beer’ and elevate itself to a serious European player. The Singureni Manor Cup, Romania’s first polo tournament, is another example.

Hosted at the equestrian woodland retreat of Singureni Manor, the polo is the arena kind (although grass grounds are very much under construction), and the tournament takes place in September. For those who just like horses, or the wilderness, or luxury, Singureni Manor is open year round and is well worth the hour journey out of Bucharest to go and visit.

What else to do while you're here

For those who love history, the city is basically alive with former Soviet influence. It is home to the world’s heaviest building, the Palace of the Parliament, which was begun by former dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu and finished after his execution in the revolution of 1989. It is fantastically enormous, and the interiors are completely absurd. It is well worth a guided tour, although most of the (again, vast) building is unused.

Bucharest itself is like any up and coming European capital. The coffee scene is sensational, there are lots of good bars and restaurants, serving great beers and food (from the traditional Romanian to more modern European fare) and everyone is fantastically friendly. The Old Town is still a bit seedy, and should be avoided in the nighttime, but the Grand Hotel’s location on Calea Victoriei is in exactly the spot you want to be, and everything you want to visit is well within walking distance.

Who’s it for?

Couples who are a bit bored of the traditional ‘Paris, Venice, Florence, Barcelona’ city break. Be the most interesting person at a dinner party by saying you’ve been to Bucharest. I guarantee nobody else has been. And for the level of luxury you’re getting, you’ll be paying a lot less than those other cities too.

What gives it the 'wow' factor?

The service at the hotel is just exquisite and that’s because everyone who works there has a deep sense of pride about what the Grand Hotel is, and what it means.

What I would change

While the hotel wouldn’t look out of place in Paris, Milan or New York, I think it probably should. A splash more Romanian flair, especially in the rooms, would be great.

Prices at the Corinthia Grand Hotel du Boulevard in Bucharest begin at €450 per night.

When The Surrey hotel reopened under the Corinthia umbrella, there was an air of confusion over its choice of interior designer.

Martin Brudnizki, lauded for his use of colour, texture and pattern — normally all in one go — didn’t seem like a natural fit for a hotel group that tended to skew towards the beige end of the paint chart.

The result is stupendous: richly decorated bedrooms, in delectable shades of lemon, vanilla and honey, that seemingly invite you to touch everything. Think raspy boucle and silk seagrass wallpapers, smooth-as-butter leather drawer liners and reeded-glass light fittings.

There’s an outpost of Casa Tua on the ground floor (the popular American chain regularly has people tearing their hair out over a reservation) and a bijou, but sensational spa featuring excellent Sisley treatments, an outdoor yoga deck and my new favourite hotel amenity, a salt room.

The rooms

The Surrey sits in close proximity to two Upper East Side hotel doyennes, The Carlyle, A Rosewood Hotel, and The Mark Hotel; together they cup East 76th Street and East 77th Street in a sort of horse shoe shape.

All three are fantastic in their own right, but despite looking very similar at first glance, there are in fact subtle differences that will appeal to, or repel, different travellers.

The Carlyle is New York’s ageing beauty — recently renovated, but most definitely still wedded, pleasingly, to its Art Deco roots. The Mark is all restrained elegance with streaks of quirky character (for example: the hot dog cart outside the front door) occasionally peeking through. The Surrey — the new kid on the block — is more overtly contemporary and flashier and nowhere is this more evident than in the jewel box-like rooms.

The textured bedrooms, described above, are beautiful, but given the chance you should really ask for one of the four signature suites. They’re called Pine Bank Bridge Suite, Bethesda Grandeur Suite, Greywacke Heritage Suite, and The Surrey Suite and each one pays homage to one of Central Park’s iconic sites.

Greywacke, close to The Metropolitan Museum of Art, is a Sarecenic-style bridge with a central pointed arch and lined in a type of sandstone of the same name and red brick. The one-bedroom suite uses terracotta tones to mimic those materials and geometric details inspired by the carvings and patterns that are a core component of Sarecenic style.

My favourite is the Bethesda Grandeur Suite — whose silky walls remind me of lemon posset pudding. There’s a marble bathroom with double vanity and marble bath, a butler’s pantry and glass-enclosed fireplace.

Eating and drinking

Casa Tua means ‘your home’ in Italian and it has wildly popular outposts in Miami, Aspen, Paris and, of course, New York. The food is, unsurprisingly, inspired by traditional Italian fare, and though I do whip up a lot of pastas, risotto and roast chickens in my own home,I can assure you that they do it to a better standard and much more elegantly here (on pretty heart motif china). I’d argue that it’s probably better than whatever you’re cooking in your own home, too.

Snagging a reservation can be tricky — when I stayed, we didn’t sit down at our table until 9pm (anyone who knows will can confirm that I’m normally in bed by then) — so ask the hotel to make a booking for you when you confirm your room.

Breakfast — a highlight — is served in the Casa Tua restaurant, too; there’s a separate ‘Lounge’ (above), open all day, for daytime coffees, light lunches and late night martinis.

How they’ll keep you busy

The spa is The Surrey’s hidden gem — and though it's tiny it knows how to pack a punch where it matters.

As well as a fitness centre, two treatment rooms, a steam room, sauna, salt relaxation room and sensorial shower, there’s a wooden terrace that seemingly appears out of nowhere with a bird’s eye view of the handsome neighbourhood. In the warmer months, the hotel organises yoga classes on it — and there was talk of a smoothie bar.

What else to do while you’re here

The Surrey is less than ten minutes on foot from The Frick which reopened earlier this year, following an extensive programme of refurbishment works, to raptuous applause. Owen Holmes, our man on the ground in New York, described it as ‘momentousness’.

For more inspiration, take a look at our guide to Manhattan.

Who’s it for?

Couples.

What gives it the ‘wow’ factor?

The use of pattern and texture in the bedrooms. Martin has outdone himself.

The one thing we’d change

The art on display in the bedrooms and communal areas — there didn’t appear to be a strong curatorial direction.

Rooms from $1,200 (about £900) a night, excluding taxes and fees. Visit The Surrey website for more information and to book.

‘Welcome. I see you are staying in one of our hives tonight.’ Never have I felt such excitement; hunkering down in a treehouse for a cosy winter night, like a woodland animal preparing for hibernation, is pretty much my wildest fantasy. Wildhive Callow Hall is where this fantasy came true. Set within 35 acres of gorgeous Derbyshire countryside, this Peak District getaway offers two-bedroom treehouses that come with a kitchenette — ideal for group or family getaways — or more intimate boutique ‘hives’ for two, which come with the best shower I’ve ever experienced in my life. You can also stay in Callow Hall itself, a Grade-II listed Victorian country house hotel that boasts 15 individually-styled bedrooms. They are just as luxurious, but not quite as special, as their woodland counterparts.

The adventure began for us on our journey to Callow Hall. Arriving on public transport necessitated a 20-minute walk from the bus stop to the hotel, which involved trekking through fields of sheep and manure with our suitcase, ungainly hopping over stiles and squelching around in mud (you don’t have to take this shortcut, but we felt it was in the spirit of things). The building itself, on arrival, is impressive. Standing tall among the Derbyshire hills and valleys it was a welcome sight. A short golf-buggy ride to our ‘hive’, in which we almost lost our luggage off the back of the vehicle at several points, made us feel giddy with the novelty of it all. We felt as though we were as far away from London as it was possible to be, in the very best way.

The rooms

Our hive was named Bluebell, and it was as magical as it sounds. There was a twinkling Christmas tree outside our front door when we got there, and the wood-panelled interiors made the small space feel immediately homely. Having the radio playing when we arrived was a nice touch, as was the Kendal Mint Cake on our tea-and-coffee station — the perfect sugary boost after a long journey. The highlight, however, was the woodland views. From our balcony, seemingly endless trees stretched out below us. To sit inside with a cup of tea and gaze at the nature around you through the tall windows was the greatest joy. The rainforest shower was another standout, and made our water pressure back home seem pathetic in the extreme. Practically womb-like, I could’ve stayed in there for hours, and when I did eventually emerge from the best shower of my life I felt as though I had been reborn.

Eating and drinking

In short: you will want to do a lot of this at Callow Hall. Their Garden Room restaurant provides sweeping, delicious views of the grounds and even more delicious meals and tipples. We started with a cocktail each. I had the Blackberry and Sloe Gin Bees Knees and it lived up to its name. Sharp and delicious — it was the perfect combination of seasonal flavours. My dining partner opted for the Liz Edwards. Named after The Times and The Sunday Times’ assistant travel editor who ‘loves our cocktails but wanted something “a bit stronger”’. Oh to reach such journalistic heights as these. Jameson Plantation Rum, Strika and cinnamon combined to make the perfect festive aperitif. Liz Edwards tasted amazing, my dinner partner confirmed.

For my starter I chose from the restaurant's ‘Best of November’ menu opting for Scottish king scallop crudo. It was the perfect blend of fresh seafood and creamy baby leek and oyster vinaigrette, with the Dorset wasabi lending it a welcome kick. I hoovered it up faster than you could say ‘seasonal dining’ and could have gone back for more, easily. My partner had the Derbyshire partridge corden bleu and, for his main, splashed out by choosing the monkfish sausage roll with smoked eel pate, which he said was outstanding.

I couldn’t resist the temptation of a classic steak, medium rare and cooked perfectly. The highlight of our dinner was, however, our pudding. Poached pear with homemade praline viennetta and hazelnut liquor. The nostalgic flavour reminded me of the pears poached in wine my mum used to make for Christmas dinner parties and was a prime example of how I really do always have room for pudding.

How they’ll keep you busy

With a sauna and cold plunge, yoga classes and spa treatments, there is plenty to help you unwind at Callow Hall. Alternatively, head to the hotel’s Coach House and plan a day out in the countryside from their Map Room. Either walk or borrow a bike and make it a two-hour excursion or a whole-day trek. The Tissington Trail is a great option, as is a hike in Dove Valley, to cross their famous stepping stones. The hotel also occasionally runs star-gazing evenings, which sound unmissable.

What else to do while you’re there

Chatsworth House isn’t far away if you're a Pride and Prejudice fan, and neither is Haddon Hall — their recent exhibition on magic and the occult was marvellous and they always seem to have plenty going on. The village of Ashbourne also has some brilliant boutique shops and restaurants. The cheesemongers, The Cheddar Gorge, caught my eye, as did the village florist. There are also plenty of good places nearby for a pint or a pub lunch. We didn’t have time to check out The Old Dog when we went, but it was highly recommended.

Who’s it for?

City escapers looking to spend time in the woods and eat local produce. And squirrels looking to hibernate in style.

What gives it the wow factor?

Definitely the treehouses.

The one thing we’d change

It’s hard to find fault, but personally I do prefer a slightly thinner duvet, if I’m being incredibly picky. We could have done with a second Kendal mint cake too — but that’s just me being greedy.

Insider tip

Keep a tight grip on your luggage if you’re seated at the rear of the golf buggy, especially if you’ve had a few Liz Edwards’.

For more information on Wild Hive at Callow Hall, and to book a room, see their website.

Whisky is the most cosmopolitan of spirits, enjoyed, or at least consumed, wherever human beings gather to numb their senses. It’s also the most provincial of spirits. The taste, aroma and texture of a whisky — or at any rate a good whisky — are specific to the place where it was made. Pinpoint parochial. Which is why you can tell the difference between, for instance, an Ardbeg, a Laphroaig and a Lagavulin, even though the distilleries where they’re produced are just a few miles apart — in this case, on Islay, off the west coast of Scotland. This is known as ‘distillery character’.

Few distilleries are more characterful than Ardbeg. It’s among the smokiest of all whiskies; it’s also very sweet. If you haven’t tasted it, imagine washing down a handful of melted Skittles with a draught of seawater that had previously been used to put out a fire on a peat bog. Many connoisseurs consider it the definitive Islay malt.

In 1997, the brand was acquired by the Glenmorangie Company, part of the Moët Hennessy drinks conglomerate, which is itself part of the LVMH luxury-goods and hospitality group. Almost overnight, Ardbeg went from being a respectable old stalwart to a white-hot cult sensation, thanks not only to the quality of the whisky, but also the wit, originality and energy with which it was reintroduced to the market. New Ardbeg expressions were given catchy names such as Heavy Vapours, BizarreBQ and Wee Beastie. Another one, Galileo, was sent into outer space to see whether doing so would affect how it tasted. (It did.)

In short, those who love Ardbeg tend to love everything about Ardbeg: the flavour, the attitude, the aesthetic, the vibe. Which helps explain the new owners’ decision to open Ardbeg House, a ravishing little hotel in what used to be a Victorian pub with rooms in Port Ellen, 10 minutes or so from the Ardbeg distillery.

The interior design, by Russell Sage Studios, defies any attempt at easy categorisation. Objects made of reclaimed copper from decommissioned pot stills sit alongside bespoke furnishings in blown glass, driftwood, studded aluminium and kelp-coloured velvet. ‘Eclectic’ doesn’t begin to cover it. It’s as paradoxical and as strangely delicious as Ardbeg itself, at once sumptuous and silly, elegant and frothy, totally over the top and, occasionally, quite brilliantly subtle.

The 12 rooms have names not numbers and, though no two are alike, all celebrate some aspect of the legend and lore of Islay and of Ardbeg. I stayed in Monster, where maritime mythology looms large. I was struck by the finely sculpted tendrils that coil around the bedposts, which I fancied were evocative not only of sea serpents but also of those gloopy, slow-moving streaks that cling to the side of the glass when you pour a dram of neat whisky.

Talk to Russell Sage for five minutes (impossible — those five minutes will inevitably extend to 50) and you’ll realise that flourishes such as those streaky bedpost serpents are anything but accidental. The hotel is full of them. The degree of thoughtfulness throughout is impressive — in the fabulous Islay Bar and Signature Restaurant on the ground floor as much as in the rooms upstairs. Concept design in hotels is a hit-or-miss business. This one’s a hit.

Sage is perhaps best known to the high-rolling public for his work on the Fife Arms, in Braemar, and, among whisky lovers, for Glenmorangie House, near Tain, his first collaboration with Moët Hennessy. They are places of powerful enchantment. But there’s something about the wild coherence of Ardbeg House that suggests a particularly close alignment between designer, project, place and product. Which is interesting, because Russell himself doesn’t have a taste for whisky. ‘Don’t drink,’ he told me. ‘But I can live off fumes.’

In a roundabout way, that’s what makes Ardbeg House great. You don’t have to be a whisky freak to get it. Let the Ardbeg pilgrims prop up the hypnotically lit bar and make their way through the 150-odd whiskies on offer (including several Ardbegs that are available nowhere else on earth). They’ll be happy. They were probably happy before they arrived. The rest of us can live off the fumes and savour the kooky buzz that the place as a whole inspires.

Rooms start from £225 in the winter and from £420 in the summer on a bed and breakfast basis.

‘The Waldorf at 7’, I texted my romantic interest, advancing the arrangements for our drinks date. I’d recently moved to New York City, and to my mind, suggesting Manhattan’s grandest hotel for cocktails signalled refinement. We settled into its ‘Peacock Alley’ lounge, the Art Deco marvel that drew international high society for most of the 20th century. ‘Frank Sinatra had his birthday parties here’, I said. ‘Did I mention Grace Kelly?’

I had a vague hope one of the hotel’s rooms might be required that night; one wasn’t. But I’m glad to have seen the public spaces, if only to better appreciate the results of the nearly decade-long renovation that was to come.

Back at the reopened Waldorf Astoria on a recent evening, I see that Peacock Alley (above) has been reconfigured — the check-in desk moved out of it — and gloriously taken back to its 1931 aesthetics, based on archive research. The finishes dazzle — the walls panelled with maple burl, the fluted columns black marble. At the center of it all, achingly restored, is Queen Victoria’s over-the-top 1893 World’s Fair clock. Also: longtime resident Cole Porter’s piano.

The house martini now costs $35. It’s perfect.

Much like the recently unveiled renovation of another cultural landmark further uptown, The Frick Collection, the mind-boggling, multibillion-dollar Waldorf project was a matter of bringing the place back to its former glory — restoring untold amounts of metalwork, stonework, artwork — while making necessary concessions to modernity.

That former glory, as it happens, is best glimpsed in the hotel’s event spaces, chiefly the three-story, opera-inspired Grand Ballroom. With its curtained, silver-leafed balcony boxes, it was home to the early Met Galas and the first Tony Awards. Have your wedding here.

The guest rooms, meanwhile, have been thoroughly redesigned and modernised. Before its closing, the hotel, which takes up an entire block — Park to Lexington Avenues, 49th to 50th Streets — had 1,400 guest rooms. It now has 375 (plus 372 residences). As a result, the rooms feel positively expansive by Manhattan standards. The interiors, by Pierre-Yves Rochon, are all muted neutrals; this hotel has not gone all-in on the maximalist approach being embraced elsewhere across the hospitality landscape.

A Guerlain Wellness Spa will soon open — all 20,000 sq ft of it.

For dining, the hotel’s Park Avenue lobby is given over in the evenings to Yoshoku, a high-concept, kaiseki-ish affair. (I’d as soon have taken in the surrounding Louis Regal mosaic and murals, another focus of the restoration, during the day, and for dinner, had a burger at P.J. Clarke’s.) The signature restaurant, Lex Yard, is led by Michael Anthony, of Gramercy Tavern fame. You almost have to order the Waldorf salad; the fruit-and-nut curiosity was invented at the hotel. Lex Yard’s Waldorf plays up the key components of the original, with smart tweaks for modern tastes. Perhaps there’s a metaphor there.

Rooms at the Waldorf Astoria New York cost from about £1,100 a night. Visit the hotel’s website for more information and to book.

The spirited wildness of the North Yorkshire coast exerts a powerful romantic pull. Towering dunes and vertiginous cliffs come down from the land to clean, sandy beaches where the land meets the chilly, churning North Sea. The towns along this stretch — among them Whitby, Saltburn and Robin Hood’s Bay — blend the charm of fading Victoriana with the kitsch appeal of a British seaside holiday. You feel, looking across the waves to Denmark and Norway, as if you’re on the edge of the world. To stand on this coast is to sense, for a moment, what it must have been like for Dark Age Britons when Vikings made ground here a millennium and a half ago. It’s not hard to see why Bram Stoker set Dracula at Whitby.

All of which makes Saltmoore a rather curious hotel indeed, for this is a seaside hotel where you could quite happily spend a few days without ever recalling that it’s in the same postcode as the fine beach at Sandsend, a couple of miles north of Whitby. Located a few hundred yards off the main coast road, Saltmoore is tucked away amid 85 acres of hills and woodland, a hidden retreat from the world where only the occasional waft of sea spray on the breeze reminds you of where in the world you are. This is a world of plush rooms, a sensational spa and garden, and excellent dining. It’s like a miniature Yorkshire version of Shangri-La, where the reality of the world seems to disappear from your mind.

The rooms

There’s been a country house hotel on this spot for many years — it used to be called Raithwaite Hall — but the place was completely re-done before opening in Autumn 2024 as Saltmoore, with 43 charmingly decorated rooms in the original period house, and a further 29 in a newly-built annexe dubbed ‘The Beach House’.

We stayed in the latter — despite its name, there are views only of the car park in one direction, and woodland in the other — in a generously-proportioned room called the Beach House Suite. It was perfectly big enough for a family of four, with a vast bed plus a sofa-bed and a Z-bed for the kids, plus a free-standing bath in the bay window and a en-suite bathroom. The pictures here speak for themselves: it’s a beautiful space, even if the relaxing blue paint of the wood-pannelled walls is as close as you’ll get to seeing the sea.

Up in the main hotel, the rooms are even more eyecatching: the Nest Suite, with its impossibly shiny bathtub, is nominally the best room in the house, but the Orchard Suite’s terrace with outdoor bathtub is also the sort of room where you’d happily disappear for days without feeling the need to surface.

Eating and drinking

Saltmoore currently has a brasserie in the main house and a (superb) pizzeria in the Beach House, with food under the eye of executive chef Adam Maddock, who’s been poached from the Fife Arms, and oversees everything from the Yorkshire breakfast and the chic bar to the picnic baskets that you can take down to the beach.

A fine dining restaurant will be opening in the coming months, but there’s no need to put off a visit on account of the food: The Brasserie earned a special mention in the Michelin Guide a couple of months ago, with the ‘wonderfully pure Whitby crab’ earning special praise.

How they’ll keep you busy

If you’ve read this far, you’ve probably noticed that this isn’t a place where you’ll feel like you need to do any more than just relax — and to help you do so, the Sanctuary Spa is delightful, with a decently-sized indoor pool with sauna, Jacuzzi, steam room and views out of glass walls of the gardens and woodland around. It’s worth bearing in mind, both for those who have children and those who don’t, that barring a couple of hours a day this is a child-free space.

Should you be feeling more energetic, we’ll remind you (and you may need reminding) that the sea really is just a ten-minute walk down the long hotel driveway. Surfing lessons, horse riding, cycling and even a coastal running club can all be arranged by the Saltmoore team.

What else to do while you’re there

Whitby, a couple of miles to the south of the hotel, has one of the most dramatic and beautiful abbeys in the world, a towering Gothic run atop a hill with views of the town, the harbour and out to sea. Saltburn-by-Sea, a quarter of an hour or so drive to the north, is also worth a visit, if only to ride the glorious Victorian funicular railway that plies the route between the beach and the town.

And of course, from Whitby you have the entire North Yorks Moors National Park to enjoy, whether you do so on foot, by car, or riding the gorgeous steam railway. And while it’s a longer drive, the magnificent Castle Howard is absolutely one of the finest houses in the country, and an absolute must.

Who is it for

Couples — of all ages — looking for a luxurious escape where you can do as much, or as little as you like. While children are catered for, will enjoy the sandy beaches, and were doted on by staff, we’d say that adults will enjoy Saltmoore’s vibe more.

What gives it the ‘wow’ factor

Easy: the Sanctuary Spa’s pool.

The one thing we’d change

Have we mentioned the lack of sea views yet? Okay, so it’s not something that can be changed, but it’s a compromise you’ll need to be happy with.

Insider tip

One of the stations on the North Yorkshire Moors Railway, Goathland, might look familiar: it’s world famous for playing the role of Hogsmead Station in the Harry Potter films.

Rooms start from £320 a night, or £650 for two people staying two nights with £50 each towards dinner. Visit the Saltmoore website for more information and to book.

Ashford Castle is unlike anywhere I have ever stayed before. Nestled in a 350-acre estate in Co Mayo, Ireland, the exterior of the building is magnificent and looms large on the horizon as we wind towards the entrance, which is flanked by two stone statues of Irish wolfhounds. Many guests don’t drive to Ashford Castle, my chauffeur informs us on the way, referring to the estate’s helipad. ‘How often is it used?’ I ask. ‘I have actually seen a queue of helicopters before,’ he says.

Located on the shores of Lough Corrib, which comes with 365 miniature islands, the 800-year old castle is the only Forbes Five Star hotel and spa in Ireland. It is also one of the former homes of the Guinness family, who elevated the estate when it was in their ownership, making it one of Ireland’s most celebrated landmarks — timely for any fans of The House of Guinness, which follows the story of Sir Benjamin Lee Guinness’s four children.

Originally built in 1228 by the Anglo-Norman de Burgo family, the castle was purchased by Sir Benjamin, the head of the brewing dynasty, in 1852. He expanded the estate significantly and used it to entertain guests — among them, George V — and display the family's wealth and influence. After his death, the castle was inherited by his son, Lord Ardilaun. It remained the property of the Guinness family until it was passed to the Iveagh Trust on their behalf and then sold, in 1939, to the hotelier Noel Huggard. In 2013 it was purchased by the Red Carnation Hotel Collection, which is owned by the Tollman family. ‘The impact the Tollman family have had is Guinness-esque,’ says Niall Rochford, the managing director of the estate. Case in point: sustainability has become key to the hotel's daily operations. They have partnered with EarthCheck and are on a journey to reach net-zero emissions by 2050.

Ashford Castle still has ties to the famous brewing family. In December, to mark the centenary anniversary of Lady Ardilaun’s death, the castle will host an exclusive evening in the company of four members of the Guinness family — Charles Plunket, Susan Woodruff, Sir Kenelm Guinness and Arthur Edward Guinness, 4th Earl of Iveagh.

Having undergone a two-part renovation in 2014 and 2015, to say the 83-room hotel is impressive would be an understatement. It is luxury personified: with rich fabrics of red and blue, glittering chandeliers and sparkling service. Many members of the staff have worked at Ashford Castle for decades, and it shows. The property has hospitality at its very core. Regina O'Donoghue, the director of marketing, has been at the castle for 20 years, ‘I started when I was seven,’ she jokes.

The rooms

I stayed in the King’s Room. Yes, the very same that the Prince of Wales, before he became George V, rested in — which gave me a licence to request everyone refer to me as ‘Your Majesty’ for the duration of my trip.

It has sweeping views of the lough, a working fireplace, plush red armchairs and sofas and a sumptuous velvet blue four-poster bed. The highlight of my stay? An Irish wolfhound, made out of chocolate, waiting for me on my coffee table when I arrived. The global director of chocolate and pâtisserie Paula Stakelum is, quite frankly, a Willy Wonka-level genius, and was kind enough to gift me a few more chocolates to take home.

Eating and drinking

When you’re not full to the brim with chocolate dog, there are plenty of places to eat. For a lazy morning, order breakfast to your room, and enjoy anything from a plate of cured meats, to fresh fruits and eggs Benedict. For lunch, take traditional afternoon tea in the Connaught Room, where Lord and Lady Ardilaun hosted the likes of Oscar Wilde and George Bernard Shaw.

For dinner, your options are endless. I dined twice, firstly in The George V Dining Room, which was built to honour The Prince of Wales in 1905. The tasting menu is divine — think fresh tuna tartare and creamy truffle risotto — and popular with visitor's celebrating a special occasion. However, my favourite meal was at the rather more pared back Cullens at the Cottage which specialises in fresh seafood and excellent service.

How they’ll keep you busy

How won’t they? There's falconry, horseback riding, dog walks with the estate’s frankly gigantic Irish wolfhounds (real, not chocolate), a tour of the kitchen garden, clay pigeon shooting, evenings in the castle’s cinema (it has its own popcorn station), kayaking, archery, fishing, tennis and a nine-hole golf course.

The castle's spa was among my favourite experiences. It has a swimming pool with a mosaic wall so beautiful it took me aback and I had a massage and facial so relaxing I almost fell asleep. However, the best experience was, undoubtedly, a boat trip to one of the islands on the lough. A man called John motored me out, past a stone obelisk. ‘My ancestors put that there,’ he told me, recounting how used to swim in the lake as a child and fish in it today for trout and salmon — a testament to how those who work at Ashford Castle are more than just employees. When I arrived two waiters were in position, next to a crackling log fire, with glasses of Champagne. It was magical.

What else to do while you’re there

Maybe an unorthodox suggestion from someone who visited in October but: take a dip in the lough at sunrise. A rather wine-sodden plan cooked up at dinner the night before saw me plunging into its icy waters at 7:30am with two other guests and the restaurant and wine manager Robert Bowe, who has worked at Ashford Castle since 1987. I’ve never been colder, but it was the defining memory of my trips, hands down.

Who is it for?

Pierce Brosnan, if history is anything to go by. He got married here and couldn’t tie his bow tie, so he asked Robert for help and gifted him the bowtie afterwards. (This depends on if you believe Robert’s stories which many of the hotel’s staffers had warned me to take with a pinch of salt.) Christine Baranski comes twice a year; and Brad Pitt, Fred Astaire, Sharon Stone and John Travolta are among those that have also stayed.

Oh and at someone’s wedding, when Murder On The Dancefloor was playing, singer Sophie Ellis-Bextor happened to be staying and hopped up on stage to join the wedding band.

What gives it the wow factor?

The staff. They were the best part of the experience and went out of their way to make me feel at home. Oh, and the chocolate dog. I think about him often.

The one thing we’d change

The lock on my bathroom door. I was trapped in there for half an hour shouting ‘help’ out of the window to anyone who would hear. Only one man did. A very angry American who shouted back: ‘I’m on the phone’. When I finally did escape, maintenance informed me that nothing was broken, the lock was just old and I weak-wristed. They also mentioned that there was a landline in the bathroom — which I had clearly failed to notice. But, with heated floors, a cosy bathrobe and a marvellous bathtub with views overlooking the loch, there really are worse places to be trapped for 30 minutes.

Insider tip

Ashford Castle’s sister hotel, The Lodge, offers the Ashford Castle experience at a more affordable price point — ideal if you’re less bothered about staying in the castle itself and more keen to spend your money experiencing its dining options and activities. Although once you’ve stayed in the castle, it is hard to imagine staying anywhere else ever again.

Rooms at Ashford Castle start from €490.00 (about £425). Visit the website for more information and to book.

In early summer, wind cools the sliver of coastline that connects Fonteblanda and Porto Santo Stefano in south-west Tuscany. In the crescent-shaped bay, the water is whipped up into one million tiny stiff peaks and windsurfers take to their narrow boards. On land, the wind is tamer, reduced to little more than a whisper by the thousands of pine trees that stand sentry on the land’s edge, their sharp needles littering the sandy and rocky beaches below.

Villa Talamo hides behind automatic gates at the end of a dirt track, somewhere towards the north end of the bay. It is a stark, but handsome, burned-butter building with teal shutters and once operated as a Benedictine monastery. It was built, in the 18th century, by someone whose brother built an identical version several hundreds of meters away and when the wind blows just right, parting the trees just so, it is possible to snatch a glimpse of it. A small chapel, consecrated in 1831 and a part of the original structure, survives, its walls adorned with white, glossy ribbons — though it's now mostly used as storage space.

Talamo’s current owner is a Milanese man called Massimiliano Zampolli, who took it on from his parents who had, for a time, run it as a bijou hotel. In 2020, Italy was badly hit by the pandemic, and so Massimiliano decamped to the coast and relative freedom of the 10-acre estate with his young family. He began to make changes: landscaping the garden with delicate beeblossom, fragrant lavender, hardy rosemary, and striking purpletop vervain; installing a sleek infinity-style swimming pool that, if viewed from the right angle, blends seamlessly into the Tyrrhenian Sea just beyond it; and gently updating the understated interiors that were originally decorated by a close and talented friend of his father. Lucrezia Cembran Gaetani, Massimiliano’s wife and a Taschen ambassador, curated the selection of excellent books in a snug room off the central, high-ceilinged living room. The tomes vary wildly in topic — from a history of the grand tour, to Helmut Newton, to motorcycles and the complete works of Pieter Bruegel — and rest, among objets, on pistachio-cream coloured shelves. A Wilbur Smith novel hides somewhere close to the top. As of this year, Talamo is available to rent exclusively through The Thinking Traveller and sleeps up to 20 people in 10 bedrooms.

The villa takes its name from the nearby village of Talamone, which history shows has been flourishing since the Etruscan period (900-27BC). That ancient civilisation sprawled across swathes of modern-day Italy and all of Corsica, but was eventually subsumed by the Roman Republic. Ironically its people constructed the first elements of Rome’s infrastructure, including its drainage system. Though just a city, Rome under the Roman Republic asserted its authority with such immense strength and left such a longstanding legacy that the history of so many of its victims, including the Etruscans, has been obscured.

Thankfully, some remnants of Etruscan civilisation survive here, such as in Scansano where a settlement was discovered in 1973 and subsequently excavated, and in Pitigliano, home to a mysterious network of Etruscan-era sunken roads, carved into the tuff (porous rock). In Italian, the roads are known as vie cave (above) and the web connecting Scansano to Pitigliano, and the villages in between, is one of the oldest and most intact examples. Historians still understand little about them beyond how they were constructed (a laborious technique first seen in Ancient Egypt), but they likely have ties to death. What we know about the Etruscans comes largely from their elaborate tombs, thousands of which improbably survived the ravages of time. Some were made of painted wood, and others carved out of stone. Some sat above ground and some were buried underneath it. And sometimes the Etruscans built necropolises, filled with gold and food for safe passage to the afterlife — including here, where the tombs for families or individuals are hewn into the tall and vertical walls.

Other close-by villages include Orbetello, flanked by the sea on one side and a lagoon on the other (try the pastries at Ferrini), and Porto Santo Stefano, which along with Porto Ercole make up the Monte Argentario, a peninsula attached to the mainland by three, finger-thin, manmade spits of land. Giglio, an volcanic islet with clear water that is as lovely to visit as it is to say, lies 11 miles out to sea (above). In recent years, the area has attracted wise travellers who used to holiday on the Amalfi coast. In it, they recognise an unpretentious sort of glamour that once characterised that stretch of coastline in southern Italy now overwhelmed by tourism. Earlier in the year, Harry Styles was photographed in Santo Stefano and is long-rumoured to own a house nearby.

Villa Talamo’s best bedroom is called Isola Rossa and is sequestered away in a tower. It comprises a double bed, en-suite bathroom with a bathtub and, on a mezzanine floor, the house’s highest point, a single bed, suitable for children. One floor down are bedrooms Argentario and Gorgona, linked by a secondary kitchen and living room, and perfectly placed above giant, almost obscene, profusions of frothy jasmine plants. In the evening, the heavy scent snags on the day’s last raspy breaths of wind and blows through open windows.

However, the villa’s best kept secret is a cupboard under the stairs on the ground floor — next to the kitchen in which kind staff produce simple dishes typical to the region (wild boar ragout; marinated anchovies). The cupboard is full, top to bottom, with a staggering assortment of pretty, patterned tablecloths, napkins, candlesticks, plates and more — and every evening, an artfully arranged tablescape appears as if by magic on the gargantuan table some way from the house underneath a canopy of pines, palms, cypresses and wild olive trees. On my 33rd birthday there was a dove grey toile de jouy tablecloth, pale pink taper candles and posies of candy-coloured roses and giant daisies. I don’t think the Etruscans would’ve recognised the dulcet tones of ‘Happy Birthday’, but the haunted whoops of Eurasian scops owls, who joined in from hidden perches somewhere in the foliage above, might have sounded more familiar.

Villa Talamo is available to rent from £26,801 a week. Visit The Thinking Traveller website for more information and to book.

As the sea plane drops through the clouds, we catch our first glimpse of Soneva Secret — a tiny island in the remote Makunudhoo atoll. The sea is that specific shade of turquoise I’ve only ever seen in the Maldives, unbothered by the grey sky looming menacingly above it and still wonderfully inviting.

Secret is a sister resort to Soneva Fushi and Soneva Jani and all three belonged, until recently, to Sonu Shivdasani and Eva Malmström Shivdasani (Soneva is a portmanteau of ‘Sonu’ and ‘Eva’).

Have you ever rhapsodised over pictures of Robinson Crusoe-style over-water villas only accessible by boat or slides that spiral down from a rooftop stargazing deck to the reef below? You have Sonu and Eva, whose ability to help adults reconnect with their inner child knows no bounds, to thank. This latest project (which was completed before the Shivdasanis sold the group) has all the hallmarks of a Soneva resort: villas made almost entirely from wood, a barefoot philosophy, top-notch service and quirky features, such as the individual cheese, chocolate and ice-cream rooms. Secret, however, despite being the smallest of the three, is the most ambitious.

The 14 villas, their roofs speckled to look like the eagle rays who inhabit the lagoon, have been designed for travellers who want to spend most of their time staying in them. They have bijou gyms, massage rooms, private swimming pools and proper kitchens — in which someone from the large team of chefs can whip up delectable meals. If you fancy a change of scenery, but still don’t feel like eating with anyone else, you can dine on a floating platform. Privacy is paramount. One member of staff describes Fushi as the best option for families, Jani as the best option for honey-mooners and Secret as the best option for people who want to go off-grid in grand style.

Another treat awaits, too. Sonu and Eva, who hand-selected this atoll — the westernmost inhabited one in the country — will soon unveil the world’s first moving villa.

There is only a clean sweep of blue between Secret and the hazy horizon, with no other islands, infrastructure or obstructions, and this floating fantasy means that the lucky few who stay in it can be manoeuvred at will around the lagoon, enjoying tip-top sunrise views and candy-coloured sunsets. As do the other villas, it will embrace Soneva’s take on open-plan living, with cleverly designed, overlapping glass and wood walls that can be peeled back during the day—to open everything to the elements — and closed at night.

The fact that Makunudhoo is so out of the way means its waters are a haven for wildlife, including the big marine five: dolphins, turtles, sharks, manta rays (above) and whales. One evening, a marine biologist and my barefoot guardian (a Soneva-style butler that’s on hand for the duration of your stay, aided by a barefoot assistant) ushers us onto a boat with whispered promises of dolphins. My friend Amy has never seen one, but, suddenly, there they are, three, four, sometimes five deep, slipping, powerfully, through the water, as if they are horses pulling a carriage. Every so often, one or two propel themselves up and out of the water. Their small size belies their acrobatic abilities — spinner dolphins are so called because they can spin up to seven times when airborne. Sometimes the calves, no more than 20lb at birth, try to join in, but their efforts look more like enthusiastic belly flops. Experts still don’t have a concrete answer for the unique behaviour. Some have posited that it might be a form of communication, others that it’s simply really good fun.

Another day, we snorkel with manta rays with giant, supple, kite-like bodies that make a mockery of our floundering limbs. They are perfectly designed for this watery world, dancing through it and then disappearing with an effortless flick of their ‘wings’. When we clamber back on board, our barefoot guardian — who has made sure that we don’t bump into any other guests for days on end — is proferring towels and platters of fruit.

There are, of course, communal spaces, too, including The Living Room (above), a central meeting place with a restaurant, bar, shop and the aforementioned ice-cream room. It’s arranged like an amphitheatre, with steep, raked seating that allows you to gaze directly out to sea as you feast on fresh fish and fruity cocktails.

For all of its emphasis on seclusion, Secret, like its siblings, knows how to have fun. There are beach barbecues and open-air film screenings (sometimes, the shifting tides consume the cinema area at one end of the island), retractable roofs in the bedrooms so you can stargaze from the comfort of your own bed and even an overwater zipline to fine-dining restaurant Out of this World. It’s an apt description for this pint-size resort with big ambitions.

The definition of gallivant is ‘go around from one place to another in the pursuit of pleasure or entertainment’. An ironic name, then, for this hotel in Rye, where pleasure and entertainment can be found, very easily, by simply staying put.

Named Small Hotel of the Year in the 2024 VisitEngland Awards and the proud recipient of a Michelin Key, The Gallivant has recently had a revamp. Namely its restaurant, Harry’s, named after the hotel’s owner, Harry Cragoe.

‘It’s almost become a restaurant with rooms,’ said Lindsay Austin, The Galliant’s head of happiness (which is how she introduced herself to us when we arrived on a sunny afternoon in August). ‘I have never met anyone that found it cheesy,’ she added, firmly, when I asked about her official job title. Lindsay looks after everyone at the hotel — guests and staff — and she will cater to every request. ‘We did go out and buy a frisbee for a guest’s dog, once,’ she offered, as an example. ‘Happiness: tick.’

The rooms

Named after the BBC’s Shipping Forecast (an idea of the owner’s), each room is an individual and thoughtfully crafted. Ours, Cromarty, was decorated in shades of teal and dark blue and came with a luxurious bath tub which was separated from the rest of the room only by a sliding door, to be utilised accordingly based on how amorously your overnight partner and you are getting on at any given time. It also featured an enormous bookcase built into the wall around the bed’s headboard. A title named The Cinnamon Bun Bookstore, a picture book that followed the history of surfing and Ovid’s Erotic Poems stood on our shelves. Something for every reader.

Eating and drinking

Although I am always a bit suspicious of restaurants named after men, Harry’s was the standout of our visit; light and airy, but still small and intimate. Vintage swimsuits were framed on the walls and among the bikinis and budgie smugglers were a dozen or so hanging plants.

Matthew Harris, the executive chef, previously of Bibendum, said the plan to relaunch was ‘to make it stand out from being a hotel restaurant’. He has always worked with primarily French and British cuisine, and Harry’s is no different. His key ingredients? ‘Lots of local produce — everything's very seasonal and fresh,’ he said. The menu itself is ‘ever evolving’, based on the the produce available at the time. ‘There can be dishes that are on there for a few weeks, and then there are dishes that are on there for a few days. It depends on what's good at the time and what the fishermen are catching.’

The catch of the day is always the most popular with diners, he said, and so, after a delicious starter of freedived grilled scallops with fennel purée, tomato, saffron and broad beans, along came an enormous piece of skate — so big was the catch, the waiter told me, that each wing had to be chopped into three. It was divine, with capers, lemon, slices of some sort of citrus fruit that I guessed to be pomelo and, à la the French, enough butter to pull an elephant through a drainpipe.

My dinner partner feasted on cured trout with pickled cucumber, beetroot, dill and mustard sauce to start (I snuck a bite, it was exceptional) and royal bream with chorizo, clams, sea aster and aioli for his main (in the name of thorough journalism, I also tried this. It was mouthwateringly good). Seafood is really where Harry’s excels. So much so that it didn’t bother us when our wine arrived after our starters. Too full for pudding, we managed to squeeze in some boozy chocolate truffles and Somerset cider brandy for pudding, before heading back to our room, utterly satisfied.

The best dinner we’ve ever had was followed, the next morning, by an outstanding breakfast spread which included local cheeses, charcuterie, smoked salmon, yogurt and fresh fruit and vegetables. A home-made ‘pick-me-up’ shot made with orange, turmeric and ginger was a lovely addition. There was also a Bloody Mary ‘recovery station’ for those who had gone too hard at the hotel bar the night before.

How they’ll keep you busy

When not gorging on the delicious local fare provided by Harry’s or relaxing in the free standing bathtub in your room, you can take a yoga class, hosted at the hotel when the weather is bad, and on the beach when the sun shines. There is also an option for ‘drinks in the dunes’, where you can order anything from the cocktail menu to take with you and a picnic blanket to the sandy beach a five minute walk away. Afterwards consider lurking thirstily in the communal space at around 5pm, as The Gallivant hosts an ‘English wine at 5’ event each day. Wood panelled floors, low lighting and cosy chairs and sofas make it a welcome spot for some sipping. Plenty of hounds are scattered around too, including in The Snug, a specific ‘no dog’ zone, where a giant schnauzer was lounging contentedly. A grand piano with a song book of The Beach Boys Greatest Hits was also a nice touch.

What else to do while you’re there

Rye itself is a brilliant day out. I recommend visiting the 12th century Church of Saint Mary — make sure to climb up its narrow bell tower to marvel at the views at the top — The George in Rye, for one of the best cocktails around, and Marino’s Fish bar for afters, to satisfy your fish-and-chips cravings.

Who is it for?

People who love good food, the coast and getting away from it all.

What gives it the wow factor

Harry’s.

The one thing we’d change

Although we loved the ‘drinks in the dunes’ experience, despite the inevitable English rain that accompanied it, we were disappointed when — after watching an almost acrobatic feat performed by one of the cocktail bartenders — we were handed canned Negronis for our coastal stroll. It didn’t make them any less delicious, however and I’d definitely return to The Gallivant, if only to sample their Sunday Roast — the first time the restaurant has ever offered one — launching in the middle of September. My mouth is beginning to water just thinking about it.

Rooms at The Gallivant start at £165 a night on a room only basis based on two sharing. Visit their website for more information and to book

Tourism is booming in Oman, contributing more than $5.5 billion to the economy last year, according to official data.

Hotel heavyweights, including the St Regis and Mandarin Oriental groups, have moved into Muscat and, just as the capital is a natural gateway to the rest of the Sultanate, so the Gulf country’s appealing combination of an outward-facing attitude with authentic traditions makes it a stepping stone to the wider Middle East.

Of course, the knock-out landscapes — white-sand beaches, monumental mountains, endless desert — help, too.

Elegant Resorts has a new private itinerary that combines the coastal cities of Muscat and Salalah with the Al Hajar mountains and guests checking into The Malkai, which opens in the autumn of 2026, will be chauffeured between its trio of tented camps in fully-equipped Land Rover Defenders.

The sites, in the coastal farmlands of Barkaa, the Al Hajar mountains and the sweeping Sharqiyah Sands, each comprise 15 tented pavilions, inspired by traditional Bedouin tents, a spa and marble swimming pools (one made out of Imperial Red marble, another of dark beige Aramis, both quarried in Oman).

Guests will be accompanied by a dedicated Murshid (guide, friend and philosopher) on the immersive four to ten night journeys — which will included privileged access to a private island in the Al Dimaniyat archipelago. This protected nature reserve off the coast of Barkaa, with its vibrant coral reefs and secluded beaches frequented by nesting turtles, is a snorkeller's paradise.

Rooms at The Malkai will start from about £1,630 a night.

The nicest thing about Keeper’s Cottage — Heckfield Place’s new, self-contained retreat — is how quickly you forget you’re in a hotel. It feels familiar, welcoming: like home. This isn’t a suite with a minibar, it’s a cottage with a front door and shelves styled as if someone actually lived inside it. Most importantly, your dog can come too.

Privacy is the point. Perched on the edge of Heckfield’s Upper Walled Gardens, overlooking the main house’s original kitchen garden, Keeper’s Cottage comes with sunrise views and a firepit for cosy evenings in — all without being overlooked. Inside, it’s all natural tones and earthen textures, Ercol chairs, English oak floors and log baskets that make you look forward to winter even on a sunny day in August. The kitchen is stocked with sourdough, butter from Heckfield’s Guernsey cows, apples from the orchard, and a Sage Barista Express machine — a dream for coffee lovers. Everything is so abundant that you can picture yourself staying the week, no matter how short your actual booking is.

The cottage also offers rare flexibility. Bring the dog, add a child (or two at most), and the living room converts beautifully into another bedroom with heavy curtains that slide across to make it feel private. There’s even a small, chic study tucked away to one side — the kind of space that convinces you you’d be your most productive and creative self if only you could stay a little longer.

Upstairs, the super-king bedroom has a fireplace of its own (because one is never enough), cream-painted panelling and a bed that dares you to stay put until lunchtime. There’s a roll-top tub in the bathroom complete with a generous array of Wildsmith products (named after William Wildsmith, the 19th-century botanist and gardener whose progressive ideas shaped the estate). The brand takes its cues from trees — their ability to nourish, adapt and heal — and natural sponges, making it feel like the spa you’ve always tried to re-create at home, but never quite achieved.

The magic of Heckfield is woven across the estate: the bar that stays open until the last guest leaves; 4pm teatime, when cake appears silently, as if by magic, in the drawing room; and the potatoes — crisp and slathered with leek and garlic aioli — against which all others will now be judged. The staff can tell you not just what’s on your plate, but exactly which bed in the market garden it grew in. Everything you eat will be delicious, yes — but also thoughtful and creative. Expect nothing less from culinary director Skye Gyngell, the brains behind Spring at Somerset House and formerly of Petersham Nurseries, where she earned a Michelin star for her pioneering seasonal cooking.

And then there’s the Bothy by Wildsmith. These spa treatments follow circadian rhythms, so massages are 90 minutes minimum, because anything less would be rushed. Afterwards, move slowly to the candle room (not its official name) — where phones and clocks are banned and the only thing to mark the passing of time is a slowly descending flame. Sauna rituals coax circulation into action, leaving you feeling light as you plot ways to stay forever. Three hours is the suggested minimum; a full day is better. Bring a book, settle by the pool, order breakfast, lunch or dinner — or all three — and pretend this is your life now.

Keeper’s Cottage isn’t simply somewhere to stay — it’s a place to live, if only briefly. Comfortable and familiar, it quickly sweeps you up in the calming rhythm of the hotel that surrounds it.’

Rates at Keeper’s Cottage start from £3,350 a night, including breakfast and daily tea and cake. Visit the Heckfield Place website for more information and to book

Though Country Life first mentions Gravetye in 1925, it was in 1996 that we branded it ‘a double legend’. The Elizabethan manor house in West Sussex was built for Richard Infield, an ironmaster, for his new bride, but it is better known as the home of famous gardener William Robinson and, more recently, as a country-house hotel.

Famed for his ‘pioneering love of informality’ Robinson used his gardens ‘to demonstrate his fiery opinions’. Among his many accolades, he is remembered as a champion of gardening to mimic Nature — in stark contrast to the then vogue for very formal Victorian beds — which led to the popularising of the English cottage garden.

The 1,000 acre estate includes a lake, meadow and orchard, but it is the Flower Garden, with Robinson’s exuberant borders, now under the watchful eye of head gardener Tom Coward, that make a lasting impression. Garden tours also take in the elliptical Kitchen Garden — a 1½ acre, sloping site, enclosed by 12ft-high, sandstone walls.

After Robinson, Peter Herbert arrived at Gravetye in 1958. Captivated by the gardener’s house and its setting he converted the property into one of the first ever country house hotels and ran it until his retirement. In February 2012, it was bought by fund manager Jeremy Hosking, a long standing patron, who set about reversing the gradual decline that the property had suffered in the previous years.

The rooms

The rooms and suites at Gravetye still feel like they belong to a private home — likely because one, there are only 17, and two, they are all furnished with a mixture of antiques, oil paintings and squishy sofas. Some are wood-panelled, some papered in jovial botanical-print wallpaper. Others boast four poster beds.

Our room, Lime, was named, as they all are, for one of the many trees that grow on the estate, was in the eaves, but still spacious enough — with its own sitting area — that we didn’t have to stoop. The view, through mullioned windows, was of the main flower garden and so charming that we didn’t mind when we forgot to close the curtains and woke up at 5am to the sun’s mellow morning light casting it all in a pinky glow.

Eating and drinking

Gravetye is a lovely hotel, but it's the food that helped to put it on the map — and people journey down from London, and much further away, just for dinner in the glass-fronted restaurant. Last year, there were whispered concerns about its future when executive chef George Blogg announced his plans to put down his apron — but it happily held onto its Michelin star in this year’s list.

And rightfully so.

Martin Carabott, of Luca and Hide, has stepped into George’s shoes and carried on the tradition of focusing on hyper-seasonal ingredients. Indeed, the Victorian kitchen garden supplies more than 90% of the required fresh produce, and the team only works with suppliers with a similarly robust commitment to proper animal welfare standards. When we stayed — in August — there were oodles of British caught fish and a magical blackberry souffle on the menu.

How they’ll keep you busy

The hotel’s facilities are limited — there’s no swimming pool or spa, so you’ll need to find other ways to entertain yourself. Think: a thorough exploration of the extraordinary walled garden (above), long, lazy lunches on the terrace, and hours spent reading a good book in the ground floor bar with its pretty and ornate carved ceiling.

What else to do while you’re there

Wakehurst, home to the Millennium Seed Bank, Borde Hill Gardens and Sheffield Park, landscaped by Capability Brown, are all within striking distance. As in Standen House — an Arts & Crafts National Trust property — and the Bluebell heritage railway.

Gatwick Airport is 12 miles away.

Who is it for?

My best friend’s father-in-law — I’m going to guess he’s in his mid-60s — says that Gravetye is his favourite hotel in the UK and stays every year, to mark his birthday.

However, age aside, anyone with an appreciation for gardening will have a good time.

What gives it the ‘wow’ factor

The garden, obviously. And the staff, whose sense of service and knowledge make a strong case for this being a five star hotel and not a four star one.

The one thing we’d change

We would’ve loved a bath in our room — make sure you request one if it’s of equal importance.

Gravetye Manor is a Relais & Châteaux hotel and rooms start from £405 a night. Visit the Gravetye website for more information and to book.

The Okavango River, the fourth largest in Africa, is a wonder of the world. Rising in Angola, it runs for 1,000 miles into the Delta of the same name before disappearing beneath the Kalahari desert. It never reaches the sea.

The river fills the Okavango Delta in Botswana at a critical period of the year, when the area would otherwise be dry, and this makes it a unique area for wildlife — the perfect destination for a safari.

For our trip, we opted to sleep entirely under canvas, which makes for a complete safari experience in a way that being cocooned behind bricks and mortar can never match. Tents make you a part of Nature. If you think you need a television in your room, you are in the wrong place. TIA: This Is Africa. Let the canvas surround you and the country will do the rest.

Mokete Camp

As the helicopter swept lower across the vast, green marsh, Rachel and I saw our first few elephants. And then a herd, and then dozens of pachyderm families. Here was somewhere special.

As we touched down, brimming with excitement, the staff sang to greet us. Mokete Camp consists of a series of tented rooms on the edge of mopani woodlands looking towards the great elephant-clad plain where, incongruously, a single solitary tree stands. At night, the roof of our canvas tent was peeled back so that we could stare and wonder at the infinity of stars to the tune of the hyenas’ whoop and the lions’ roar — with nightjars on backing vocals. We weren’t on safari, we were part of it. We had been consumed by Africa.

October is the end of the dry season. Dust devils spun in the heat as the vast herds of herbivores made their way to drink from the river in the marsh. Water is life and death and animals perform a daily dance between the two.

The area supports some 5,000 buffalo, confusions of wildebeest in every direction, thousands of elephants, warthogs and antelope of every hue. In one 360-degree spin, I counted nine different species. There are three prides of lion in the concession: one hunts young elephants; the biggest numbers 21 and had recently killed nine buffalo in 90 minutes; the third is based at the camp. Mokete is heavy-metal game viewing.

At sunset, spellbound, we watched wild dogs wake, hunt and kill a tsebebe. It was beautiful and horrific. Then hyenas arrived from the shadows, but were beaten off by the dogs. We watched the same wild dogs chase a cheetah up a tree: Africa’s two rarest predators in one go. The following day we saw the cheetah—its brother killed by lions earlier in the year—bring down a warthog. This is no ordinary safari.

At this time of year, a number of elephants die due to heat stroke, so there was plenty of food for the carnivores, the undertaker-resembling marabou storks and the vultures. Beside one corpse, we found a lioness with four cubs, two of her own and two of her sister’s. A hyena skulked in the shadows ready to grab a cub. At Mokete, the crash, bang, wallop of life is at its most pulsating.

In summary

The camp, which opened in April 2024, is a 45-minute helicopter ride from Maun (the only way to get there). Raw and remote, yet so abundant with life, it is one of Africa’s last truly wild sanctuaries. There is nowhere like it. It takes only 18 guests and has a water hole in the middle of it all — as well as a plunge pool for human guests.

Star rating

Brutally beautiful.

From $1,150 (about £889) per person, per night

Tubu Tree Camp

If you shut your eyes and imagined what a traditional safari lodge should look like, it would be here. We were the only guests (to 36 staff), as the water levels were too low for some of its famed pastimes, such as a safari from a mokoro, the Okavango’s famous dug-out canoe. No matter.

If Mokete was Black Sabbath at Glastonbury, Tubu Tree was Mozart at Glyndebourne. Still dramatic, but less intense and with better food. Most importantly, it was an example of the dazzling variations that the Okavango Delta and Botswana have to offer. Each of the three camps we visited was different in look, feel and experience, but together the trio made for a complete African experience.

Where the water remained, the bird life was extraordinary: pied kingfishers, stilts, pelicans, crested terns, spoonbills, saddle-backed storks, wattled cranes and ibis snuck around the water as crocodiles basked and hippos argued. Cattle egrets stalked the buffalo, as ostriches mingled with the impala. We lived our life to the rhythm of the animals, going out before dawn, returning at dusk, dozing in between. Lunches in camp looked out across a dry river bed as sun birds and barbets fed on the flowers of the sausage tree that draped across the deck. We shared our new home with bushbucks and honey badgers, the most fearless of all animals. On safari, we came across a 12ft black mamba, which terrified our guide, and a leopard and her cubs hiding up another sausage tree.

In summary

With a perfect African bar at the centre of the camp, the lodges are connected by a raised walkway. The staff were charming and we discussed the politics of the nation from diamonds—a 2,492-carat rough gem was discovered in August last year—to the free schooling and healthcare of this fascinating and successful country.

Star rating

Classic comfort — and Rachel’s favourite.

From $1,480 (about £1,144) per person, per night

Duma Tau Camp

If César Ritz had made a tented safari lodge it would be something like this. Set above a wide lagoon, it sits tucked under the Mopane woodlands criss-crossed by hundreds of ancient elephant paths. Built of wood and canvas, it is luxury in a mind-enhancing way — in the middle of nowhere. That’s nowhere if you are a human; if you are an elephant, a fish eagle or a hungry crocodile, it is one of the greatest spots on the planet.

This was my 14th African safari, but nothing prepared me for our private boat trip on the lagoon. We ate like royals, watching the abundant bird life from the catamaran. A pair of swallows, who had made their nest under the hull, happily dashed hither and thither as a herd of elephants wandered down to the water and swam across the wide lagoon. As they crossed, the water became steadily deeper until the babies only had the tips of their trunks above the waterline. It was tear-jerkingly magical. During the performance, we munched on skewers of the famed Botswanan beef and endless plates of salads and puddings as more than 100 elephants swam closely past us, touching each other for reassurance so the huge crocodiles could not grab a youngster. In the evening, many more swam back to spend the night in the mopane forest.

We watched Senior, the area’s mighty male leopard, guard his kill, the brutal defence of a female hippo trying to protect the life of her young calf from the dominant male and many lions dozing. On our final evening, we had sundowners as a huge male lion roared in Namibia, just across a narrow channel from Botswana; afterwards, a full moon rose above the tree line. At midnight, I heard a splash and got up to watch a great herd of elephants swim back from the marsh in the bright moonlight.

In summary

The sound of the fish eagles, ‘the cry of Africa’, together with the extraordinary crossings of the pachyderms is an unmatched experience. Add the camp’s luxury, food and spa and you have one of the finest holiday destinations in southern Africa.

Star rating

Jumbo luxury.

From $1,750 (about £1,350) per person, per night

If you’ve never received a coveted invitation to dine or even stay in one of the UK’s grand country houses, there’s now an easy way to get your foot — literally — in the door.

In recent years, estates, the majority still privately owned, have been throwing open the doors to their homes to one and all. Even royalty is at it — when The King was Prince of Wales and Duke of Cornwall, he stayed in Restormel Manor near Lostwithiel, part of the Duchy estate and a holiday let available to the public that can accommodate up to 18 people.

In Wales, holidaymakers could, until recently, choose between two cottages that adjoined the royal couple’s Welsh home — the Llwynywermod estate in Myddfai, Wales, when His Majesty was not in residence. (In 2023, The King announced that he was giving up the lease because he did not have enough time to make proper use of and enjoy the estate.)

In the late 1970s, Deborah Cavendish, Duchess of Devonshire, made waves when she opened the Chatsworth Farm Shop — one of the first aristocratic ventures of its kind and a prime example of a great family diversifying to help fund their sprawling demesne. The late Duchess’s son and daughter-in-law, the 12th Duke and Duchess, have followed in her footsteps, opening The Hall at Bolton Abbey in North Yorkshire — part of the ducal estate — to exclusive-use hire in 2022, the first time The Hall has been open to the public in any capacity. The 12-room, 14th-century former gatehouse, reimagined by interior designer Rita Konig, comes with access to 28,000 acres and views of the 12th-century Bolton Priory Church and ruins (above).

In fact, there’s such demand for holidays of this kind that HeritageXplore has collaborated on a series of bespoke itineraries with aristocratic families up and down the UK, offering visitors the opportunity to explore the estates and their gardens in private, away from the crowds.

Belvoir Castle, Leicestershire

There are four lodges and one house available to rent on the Belvoir estate (where HeritageXplore founder Violet Lindesay-Bethune, Viscountess Garnock, grew up) — as well as a popular glamping site. Vale House is one of the more recent additions, a nine-bedroom building part of a former engine yard that was commissioned from James Wyatt, who also built and designed the present-day Belvoir Castle (the fourth iteration on the site since William the Conqueror gifted the land to the Manners family’s first recorded ancestor, Robert de Todeni, in the 11th century). The yard had sat empty and redundant for more than 70 years, before Emma, 11th Duchess of Rutland decided to breathe life into it, transforming the remnants into a butcher, baker and farm shop respectively, with Vale House, which she personally redesigned, at its centre.

The holiday lets were popular, with listeners of Belvoir’s podcast, Duchess, in particular. The podcast — which first aired in 2021 — went behind the scenes of some of the UK’s most well-known privately owned country houses and estates and met the women responsible for running them. It was hosted by the Duchess herself and produced and directed by her daughter. Its success, the latter explained, is partly because of the worldwide appetite for things that the UK has in spades. ‘Look at the money that Netflix and Amazon are piling into all things Pride and Prejudice-esque,’ she says. ‘The Crown, Bridgerton, Emma. I think private heritage was perhaps a bit slow in catching onto the huge national and international interest and fascination with what they are custodians of.’

Bradford estates, Staffordshire

For weeks after it opened to guests for the first time, Charlotte’s Folly was the darling of Instagram, its eye-catching, rusty-rose-pink exterior and Emma Ainscough interiors flashing up on everyone’s ‘For you’ page, begging the question: ‘Where is this house and can I live in it?’ Well, no, but you can stay in it temporarily, courtesy of the Viscount and Viscountess Newport, who run the Bradford estate on which it sits.

The 12,000-acre estate, which straddles the Shropshire and Staffordshire borders, also includes the Newports’ ancestral seat Weston Park, 1,000 acres of Capability Brown-designed parkland and the White Sitch, a 19th-century pleasure ground.

It was to this pleasure ground that Lady Charlotte (daughter of the 2nd Earl of Bradford and great-great-great-great aunt of Alexander, Lord Newport), would walk from the main house, down a tree-lined woodland carriageway and via the folly. The latter shows up on maps dating as far back as the 1880s, but when the Newports decided to restore it, in the depths of lockdown, it was covered in questionable 1960s pebbledash. The couple managed to recover some of its original features, but had to guess at the exterior colour. ‘It was built as a folly, but it didn’t have a true purpose, it was simply there to be beautiful… so we imagined it to have been some crazy colour,’ explains Eliza, Lady Newport.

The interiors were entrusted to Emma — a young, up-and-coming interior designer whose style had already caught the Newports’ eyes. She could, the Viscountess explains, embrace the cottage’s ‘cuteness’ without getting bogged down by it. Diamond mullioned windows and Gothic door arches are cleverly contrasted against a leopard-print hair fender, cream bouclé sofa and kitsch checkerboard tiles; colour and pattern warmly embraced.

The folly’s namesake was a woman who lived a life far more exciting than her time and rank might suggest, who would surely approve of such a renovation. Lady Charlotte, a keen watercolourist, drove her own carriage around the estate and was an early adopter of photography. In her diaries, she writes about exploring the White Sitch and a tree that was brutally struck by lightning. ‘I swear I know which tree it is!’ exclaims Lady Newport. ‘There is a stump there.’

A second property on the estate, a Hansel and Gretel-style cottage called Hansa, is also available as a holiday let and the Newports have plans to develop more of the buildings, as well as an intricately carved wooden boathouse in their care.

West Barsham estate, Norfolk

Covering some 2,500 acres just off the north Norfolk coast, the West Barsham estate has been owned and farmed by the Soames family for three generations and counting. The current custodians are Jeremy and Susanna and their three children, Gemma, Archie and Flora. In a happy twist of fate, they were able to buy back a cluster of farmyard buildings from a property developer two years ago. The mid-19th-century barns — in which the Suffolk Punch horses that helped farm the land until the 1960s once sheltered — were renovated by interior designer Flora over a six-month period. There are six in total, sleeping between four and 14 people and available to rent on a self-catering basis; Meadow House, in which Flora and her two siblings grew up, has seven bedrooms. Gemma’s favourite is Greys Court, the former stables, framed by wildflower meadows and with views across to a medieval church.

Beyond the barn walls, the majority of the wider estate is still a working farm — wheat, barley, oilseed rape, sugar beet and vegetables, grown largely for a domestic market. A few animals graze the available grassy areas; there’s also 140 acres of woodlands and, most impressively, 280 acres of completely untouched marshland, a safe haven for kingfishers, tufted ducks, lapwings and egrets.

‘Our corner of Norfolk is known particularly for its extraordinary birdlife,’ notes Gemma — indeed, the barns are on the migratory path of Norfolk’s famous pink-footed geese and huge flocks of greylag geese that ‘come and feast on our sugar-beet tops’. Owl boxes, installed around the estate, have been as popular as the barns themselves, attracting barn owls in pleasing numbers.

If you’d told me I’d have the best night’s sleep in a long, long time in a nearly 500-year-old inn, I would have been skeptical. Perhaps that’s why The Swan at Fittleworth has been so popular, for so long.

The Swan has always been more than just a place for bed and board. Guests include Rudyard Kipling, J. M. Barrie, John Constable, J. M. W. Turner and Millicent Fawcett, to name just a few. The recently rediscovered guest books — filled with signatures, sketches (including one of the first motor cars arriving in the village) and even a surprise entry from the local historian’s grandmother — could inspire a novel of their own. Today, its 12 bedrooms are named after former visitors, a nod to its storied past. Above the bar hangs the original inn sign, a reminder that this has always been a house for travellers.

The Swan’s magic is that it still feels like a traditional inn, with bowed-beam ceilings (if you’re over 5ft 8, mind your head), a wood-panelled dining room and rabbit warren-like passages that had us happily lost more than once. At the same time, interiors by Zanna Westgate layer in the kind of softness and comfort that make it feel instantly like home: super-king beds with blankets you’ll want to steal, Verden toiletries (I ordered the D’Orangerie soap before I’d even checked out), and a book selection curated by Arthur Bullard of Petworth’s Readers’ Books.

Our room, Sambourne — inspired by Linley, the 19th-century Punch illustrator — was split-level, with dark blues and soft reds, wools and linens by Robert Kime, and a large dormer window. The bathroom had one of the best showers I’ve ever used and a freestanding bath, essential after a hike through the South Downs. There was a well-stocked tea and coffee station, though as someone who needs a milky cup of tea the moment I wake up, a mini-fridge wouldn’t go amiss. For the less caffeine-dependent — or the keener step-counters — the honesty bar a flight of stairs away will do nicely. And if you’re here with a new partner, you might want to request a room with a bathroom door…

Under Chez Bruce-alumnus Angus Davies, you could visit The Swan for the food alone. I always check the pudding menu first — to strategise accordingly. We tucked into scallops in garlic butter, soused mackerel, sea bream with cucumber salad and aioli, plus chips for good measure — and more aioli for… good measure. Then, as planned, the profiteroles. I’d first had them in a Lodsworth pub years ago — so good I wondered if I’d dreamt them.

The Swan at a glance

• Best rooms Turner and Woodville for extra space and dog-friendly access; Sambourne, with its Robert Kime fabrics and freestanding bath, is another favourite
• Nice touch The boot room, complete with wellies, waterproofs and trail maps
• Nearby Arundel Castle, Cowdray polo and farm shop, Goodwood, Kinsbrook vineyard

Breakfast was a continental spread of smoked salmon, honey-roast ham, eggs and warm bread, alongside cooked options, from a proper full English, to buttered kippers with lemon. It’s all best enjoyed in the new garden, created in consultation with Elizabeth Tyler — where boules courts and fruit trees meet to create a slice of the Mediterranean in rural Sussex. On a sunny day it’s easy to linger, though a walk will help work up an appetite for the garden lunch menu of wood-fired pizzas, antipasti and, to finish, soft-serve with a Flake.

The historic inn is, perhaps most importantly, dog-friendly and perfectly placed for exploring West Sussex. Seasonal highlights include polo at Cowdray, Goodwood’s festival season and the region’s vineyards, now destinations in their own right; while year-round treasures include Turner’s paintings at Petworth House. The neighbouring town of the same name is brimming with antiques and bookshops. Jewellery lovers should make a beeline for Barbara Tipple; fashion hunters will unearth vintage Chanel and McQueen at L’Éternel Dress Agency.

Almost five centuries after it first opened, The Swan still knows what travellers need: a good bed, good food — and plenty on the doorstep.

From £195 on a bed-and-breakfast basis; visit The Swan's website for more information and to book

The funny thing about Liguria, a region in north-western Italy, is that few people could point it out on a map — unless you told them that it’s where the Splendido is. The hotel, part of Belmond, treads a careful line, attracting everyone — the glitterati, the self-made man, seasoned jet-setters, the British upper crust — and alienating no one.

The destination, Portofino specifically, is postcard perfect and still less crowded than other Italian hotspots, such as Lake Como and the Amalfi Coast. The landscape, all stately villas and private yachts, is a proper Mediterranean mirage, flecked by pines, holm oaks and chestnut trees, roses, jasmine and bougainvillea. If we’re getting biblical here, then Portofino is surely Italy’s answer to the Garden of Eden.

Of course, the Splendido isn’t actually new, but it has been extensively refurbished, with a new, exclusive-use villa, Villa Beatrice, added to the mix — and it’s as splendid and as heavenly as its locale. Once an abandoned Benedictine monastery and then the lavish home of Italian Baron Baratta, this new chapter comes courtesy of one of interior design’s buzziest creators, Martin Brudnizki. ‘The goal was always to reflect and create an homage to Liguria’s architectural heritage,’ says Martin. Liguria’s ‘sense of slow luxury living’ was also referenced, inside and out. Think delicate, pesto-green details, wall frescos of native flowers, glass chandeliers that appear to float mid air and antique furniture sourced from local emporiums.

Although this is all lovely, people don’t come here merely to indulge in Splendido’s subtle luxuries, but rather to immerse themselves in the art of Italy’s greatest pastime, il dolce far niente. At Splendido, lazy, hazy summertime glamour plays out poolside, a private saltwater refuge hemmed in by gardens, where spritz-sipping poster boys and girls do nothing but lounge beside it until dinnertime. In today’s fast-changing and not-always-very-nice world, this sort of a regression is, in fact, progression, ‘the new cool’, if you will.

Portofino’s laid-back lifestyle is further exemplified at La Portofinese Eco-Farm, a form of smallholding in its natural park. Its founder, Mino Viacava, a sixth-generation Portofinan — whose family built many of the bay’s grand villas—works with Splendido, to encourage guests to see what life was like here hundreds of years ago. The guiding principle, masterminded with the late Franca Sozzani, his friend and former Vogue Italia editor-in-chief, was ‘to create something very simple and in honour of our ancestors and their self-sustaining practices,’ says Mino. There are gnarled olive trees, picnic tables with scenic sea views, vineyards, beehives, kitchen gardens and an invitation-only osteria spread louchely on land that tumbles down towards the sea.

Rooms from £2,500 a night; visit the Belmond website for more information and to book

After some gentle deliberation, I settled on a mojito to accompany my idle moments of thought while lying in a cabana overlooking the bay of Navarino. As the lime, rum and mint sharpened my palette, a waiter came and asked if he could polish my sunglasses.

He could.

The first time I stayed in a truly great hotel was the Mandarin Oriental in Bangkok, 35 years ago on my way to Australia. Many regarded it, at the time, as the finest in the world. It took my breath away, I didn’t know such style and luxury could exist; today, there are many astonishing hotels, but what would one of the originals do with a new purpose-built resort.

There are many bays, but few are framed so perfectly with tiny islands. The sapphire sea was set like a piece of jewellery between the island clasps. It is no wonder that the Mandarin Oriental chose this idyllic spot for the launch of its latest hotel which opened in April 2024, but in 1827 the bay was the setting for the last naval battle fought entirely with sailing ships between the Ottomans and a combined force of British, French and Russian warships during the Greek War of Independence. The allies won decisively, the victory is commemorated in the hotel’s Three Admirals Bar, a short electric bike ride up the hill from where I was lounging and where later we would watch the sun set before dinner.

The hotel is about an hour’s drive from Kalamata or three from Athens. As we peeled off the main road, I briefly wondered what we had let ourselves in for. There were golf courses everywhere — disappointingly there is no collective noun for them; a development of golf courses? — and as this is one of the few sports that has escaped me, I pondered how we would fill our days.

In the end, we did pretty much nothing and a little bit of everything.

Ask any Greek person who makes the best olive oil and they will reply: ‘I do’. Rachel, my wife, and I tested different local varieties as if it was fine wine and found it remarkable how varied in colour and taste each were; we had a barbecue on the beach one evening, where fish were crucified above burning coals and meats spun on rotisseries, until it rained and we were all moved seamlessly inside (effortlessly coping with a problem is the mark of any great hotel). At lunch, beside the pools at the beach club, we ate the most wonderful pizza, made by a specialist chef trained in Tokyo, but don’t share that with your Italian friends. Excellence is truly international today. We even wandered along the golf course as it was so beautiful beneath the hills of Cyprus and pine trees.

Nearby is the town of Pylos home to the Palace of Nestor with its bright frescos and 40 minutes away is the astonishing archaeological site of Mycennae, but largely we just absorbed the sun, food and wines.

Doing nothing has rarely, if ever, felt so good.

Rooms from £980 a night; visit the Mandarin Oriental website for more information and to book

Hotels and espionage go together like vodka and a martini glass. In The West End Front, his account of the wartime secrets of London’s top hotels, historian Matthew Sweet paints an extraordinary picture of debriefings and double-crossing at London’s grandest establishments.

Suspected double agent Stella Lonsdale was confined by MI5 to Room 519 of the Waldorf during her interrogation (she played against type by only ever ordering fruit juice on room service), there were ‘more spies than sommeliers at Claridge’s’ (keeping an eye on the exiled royal families of Europe, no doubt), and the Dorchester’s concrete walls concealed any number of spooks both homegrown and imported. But the hotel whose history is most deeply interwoven with the spy game doesn’t appear anywhere in the book’s index — for the very good reason that it was not a hotel at all.

The clue is in The OWO’s name: it’s an acronym (appropriately, given its past) for The Old War Office. Built in 1906, the spectacular Edwardian premises overlooking Whitehall has witnessed almost every significant chapter in the 20th century history of British espionage, from the formation of MI5, MI6 and the Special Operations Executive (SOE) to the planning of the D Day landings.

After a stint as the Ministry of Defence, a decade ago the building was acquired by the Hinduja Group and partners Onex Holding, which set about spending the next eight years (and £1.4 billion) transforming it into what is, to my mind, easily the capital’s most extraordinary place to stay.

London has such a surfeit of historic buildings that it tends to be careless with them (think of all handsome old Victorian Tube stations now languishing as newsagents), but The OWO really shows how it ought to be done if time and money are no object. Such is my thinking as I take in the astonishing Art Deco majesty of my corner suite overlooking Horse Guards, which combines the best kind of deep-pile, old-school luxury with lighting and audio controls so hi-tech that I have to call down to the butler to ask for help operating them.

The suites have been named as part of the management’s commitment to honouring the women who worked in British intelligence: as signatories of the Official Secrets Act the vast majority lived the rest of their lives without ever revealing the truth of their wartime work. Mine is named after Vera May Atkins CBE, a Romanian-born intelligence officer who oversaw SOE’s female agents, as well as tracking down more than 100 missing operatives after the war ended. Another, which witnessed the formation of what would become the RAF in 1912, honours Christine Granville, the Polish-born SOE agent whose daring behind enemy lines was said to have been the inspiration for Vesper Lynd in Casino Royale (more on which shortly).

Much better known are the two men whose names are most often mentioned in the same breath as The OWO: Sir Winston Churchill and Ian Fleming. The former Prime Minister was Secretary of State for War here between 1919 and 1921 and visited often during the Second World War. Look out for the balcony from which he addressed his staff every morning, as well as the curiously smudged faces of the stone lions guarding the marble central staircase (which during operational periods was out of bounds to all but the most senior officers); Churchill would supposedly pat the lions’ noses every time he passed for luck. Fleming, meanwhile, is famously said to have dreamt up James Bond within these walls when he was working in naval intelligence (he reached his desk via the ‘spy’s entrance’, still extant), and before its current incarnation the building appeared in several Bond films, playing MI6’s headquarters in Octopussy, A View To A Kill, Licence To Kill, Skyfall and Spectre. There are nods to his legacy around the hotel: washing my hands in the bathroom next to the Guards Bar, my ears prick up at a John Barry composition.

The OWO dazzles regardless of whether or not you’re an armchair espionage buff, but signing up for one of the tours provided by the team adds something special to the experience of staying there. Even the corridors — all 4km of them — are rich in remarkably colourful history. See the mosaics running along the edges? They were relaid piece-by-piece when the hotel was restored; the gaps are due to the old tradition of chipping off pieces to make cufflinks for retiring officers. What about those mysterious metal grills? They once concealed telephone cables, but their pattern inspired the design of British hand grenades.

The OWO certainly isn’t stuck in the past: the former library, once hosting the biggest collection of military history volumes in Europe, is now Saison, a gorgeous light-filled brasserie overseen by three-Michelin-starred chef Mauro Colagreco. You can enjoy world-class sashimi from sushi master Endo Kazutoshi on the roof terrace. And the four-floor Guerlain spa is a world away from the building’s former life, although the double-height underground pool does feel very Bond. But in a hospitality landscape increasingly defined by very obvious ostentation it offers something very rare: a sense of history come alive, twinned with the capacity to surprise. Both are in evidence at the much-whispered-about subterranean ‘Spy Bar’ (no photographs allowed), which proves to be so genuinely well hidden that we get lost looking for it, only to realise that one of the anonymous doors we’ve passed several times is discreetly numbered ‘007’.

Rooms from £900 a night. Visit The OWO website for more information and to book

As the ship sets sail out of the port of Nice and a lounge singer sang French standards on the deck under a billowing tricolore flag, a member of staff explained to me that their company, Ponant, does not talk about ‘cruising’. It talks about ‘travel’. We are not, this cruise company would have us believe, on a cruise. Ponant knows that ‘cruise’ can be a dirty word. It evokes gigantic, impersonal ships, tacky entertainment, hordes of tourists moving cattle-like through port towns, buffet plates and organised fun, places where guest numbers run into their thousands. Fine, if that is your bag, but that is not the bag of the people targeted by Le Ponant, the ship on which I am about to spend three days sailing around the South of France.

The idea is this sailing cruise ship, with a mere 16 state rooms and a crew to guest ratio of 1:1, is as close as you can get to experiencing a private luxury yacht charter without paying private-luxury-yacht-charter prices. A trip on Le Ponant doesn’t come cheap, but it does come considerably cheaper than chartering a ship such as this. I was on board to see what exists in the previously uncharted waters between cruise and private superyacht and whether it feels more like the former or the latter.

I took my mother, because inviting one’s mother on a luxury French voyage is an opportunity to bank daughter points in an amount never previously recorded. We were picked up from Nice airport in a Mercedes-Benz, which seemed a promising start. As we pulled up to the port, we got our first look at Le Ponant. I love a ship myself, but I don’t think you’d need to in order to like this one. She’s elderly enough at 33, but has had a complete refit, completed in 2022, and does not look her age. She has brand new teak decking, a swish spa and fitness area and newly expanded state rooms with balconies. There are sails, too, which everyone on board gathered to see unfurled in the riviera sunset for the first time as we sailed out of port, the first of dozens of glasses of Champagne in our hands.

Le Ponant is a member of Relais & Chateaux, the first sailing yacht to join the company. This means that the food and wine are good — really, really good. Our first five-course meal on board included a sea-bass tartare, langoustine with hollandaise and a selection of Maison Bordier cheeses. Dinner is where the public nature of this yachting experience is most keenly felt. Talking to strangers is not something I naturally find myself wanting to do on holiday. If given the option, I’ll keep myself to myself, yet I was glad not to be given the option here. Apart from anything else, it’s nice to have a small company of new people to turn to as yet another silver tray of Champagne comes around, as you are offered another geometrically perfect cube of French toast topped with caviar and exclaim: ‘My God, I may never know luxury like this again. Santé!’

The state rooms themselves are nice places to be, if you want a moment away from your fellow cruisers. Mine was on the lowest deck of the ship, but chic, with perhaps a dozen pillows on the bed, onto which I could flop to watch 20 minutes of Oppenheimer dubbed into French before falling asleep in the middle of the day. That is to say: sailing on Le Ponant can feel as directionless and pleasantly lazy as any other holiday, if you want it to be. A Ponant cruise, like all cruises, involves an hour-by-hour itinerary of activities. There are entertainments and excursions planned for more or less every moment of our time on board, but there was no pressure to get involved in any of them if we didn’t want to. Better still: despite the fact that we were on a yacht and, therefore, often anchored away from shore, Le Ponant had enough Zodiac boats that you could bail on any given activity halfway through and return to the ship.

Our first full day included a tour of Cassis, on which the guide told us with utmost seriousness that ‘lunch is the most important time in the life of a French person’, a boat tour of the Calanques, swimming and a wine tasting up in the hills above the town. After wandering the old medieval centre of the winding streets of Cassis, we boarded what one of the Ponant staff referred to as ‘the touristic train’, a shuttle of mock train carriages, up to the vineyard. She was at pains to emphasise that this mode of transport ‘is not Ponant’, and was instead a necessity in order to avoid the traffic. I got the sense that as well as ‘cruise’, ‘tourist’ is something of a dirty word here. We are, of course, tourists, but every effort is made so that you don’t feel like one.

After we got back to Le Ponant, about eight deck hands got busy setting up an inflatable pool off the back of the ship, a process that took at least half an hour, and I felt so guilty about the fact that nobody wanted to use it that I went for a swim, despite being cold from swimming already. This was, however, the only time I did anything during this trip that displeased me. In any case, there was a chef preparing crêpes suzette back on deck to warm me up.

There always seemed to be some kind of treat station on board. As soon as the thought ‘I’m a little hungry’ entered your mind, you’d turn around and see a whole leg of Ibérico ham being sliced or a little table of macaroons. On the second night, a Michelin-starred chef from Limoges joined the ship and presented us with a dinner of asparagus blanquette and a rack of veal about which I can give no more ringing endorsement than the fact that I exclaimed out loud in incredulous delight more than once during the meal.

We awoke the following day off St Tropez. Where better to feel as if you are on a private yacht than among 100 examples of the real deal? It didn’t feel as if we were masquerading as private yachters, either. A Le Ponant voyage is an exercise in discretion. If appearances are your concern, nobody is going to be any the wiser that you are not, in fact, on a luxury yacht, but a cruise ship. I don’t see anything so gauche as a lanyard on board or hanging around the neck of the tour guide who showed us around St Tropez: she was wearing Versace shades and blended in perfectly with the locals.

It was somewhat painful to find myself dumped back in the muggy normalcy of Nice airport departures after the glamour of three days aboard Le Ponant. That said, as this is a luxury holiday at a price to reflect that, it seems appropriate to point out some imperfections that might grate with some guests. The ship creaks at night. I didn’t mind, but my mum did. Her bathroom light and fridge remained non-functioning for the duration of the trip. My shower made a strange noise not unlike a meat grinder. That is, however, basically it for complaints. If the private-yacht-charter experience is about feeling maximally catered for, a break from the sense that there is anything you ought to be attending to other than your own enjoyment, then cruising (or, rather, travelling) on Le Ponant is a pretty near match.

Ponant’s seven-night Southern France and the Italian Riviera by Sea cruise with Smithsonian Journeys (from Barcelona to Civitavecchia, Rome) costs from £5,490 per person

I’ve always wanted to have a bath outside, in which I could languish peacefully, looking up at a wide-open night sky full of stars. At Thornfalcon, a new vineyard, farm and ever evolving rustic idyll in Somerset, you can. The copper roll top in question sits beside a luxurious new shepherd’s hut with views towards Thorn Hill, beyond neat rows of Chardonnay vines interspersed with little black boxes that tune into Radio 4 if ever a deer comes near — very civilised.

The Vine Hut is just one of three farm stays on the property.

Thornfalcon Winery & Press represents a dream realised for owners Sophie Brendel and Panu Long, who decided to up sticks and leave London for this wild and wonderful 40-acre microclimate in the West Country, sandwiched between the Mendips, Quantocks and Blackdown Hills, in 2022. ‘I'll never forget when we first got here, that first day, just feeling like we’d hit a magic jackpot, walking outside in this beautiful place. It still hits me even now,’ says Sophie.

As former director of audiences, commercial and digital at the V&A, she has ‘an eye for colour and pattern,’ she tells me — definitely an understatement. Sophie’s boho-rustic-English-country style hits a perfect note, as evident in the renovations she has undertaken. She also has a sound business head and pots of ambition. The amount of future projects she has planned is a little dizzying — from events and art spaces to a wildflower meadow and a spa treatment room in an old boatshed, and everything in between, and that’s before we’ve touched on the vineyard and cider press that her husband Panu, a former mixologist, has created (incidentally, I can attest that Panu makes a stellar cocktail).

The previous owners of Manor Farm, Thornfalcon, had discovered a 150-year-old cider press, buried deep in mud in a barn, and restored it to full use. Sophie and Panu now use it to make their delicious apple juice and cider. It’s proper old-fashioned labour, requiring a couple of people at once; luckily, they joke, people don’t break down as easily as machines. And there is joy to be had in ‘bringing back traditional cider-making methods to this farm, as it would have been 150 years ago,’ says Panu. Apple varieties in the orchard are mostly local. ‘A lot of them are named after places near here, like Stembridge Cluster,’ explains Sophie. ‘Some are named after people, like Porter’s Perfection.’ ‘Mainly we have Kingston Black,’ adds Panu, ‘a particularly noble cider apple. It’s a bit tricky to grow, but cidermakers love the juice.’ Being Somerset, there are quite a few good farmhouse cider producers in the area. So rather than adding more of the same, Panu decided to produce something different. Standing beside several giant barrels, he explains that they are making the ‘light, delicious stuff that will come in a Champagne bottle’. It’s sparkling, slightly lower in alcohol, but 100% apple. ‘It’s similar to what you get in Normandy,’ he says. ‘They call it bouché over there. Here, we call it keeved. You drink it out of wine glass rather than a pint. It's quite labour-intensive to make cider this way, storing the apples for weeks and weeks to get lots of pectin, fermenting them between 8 and 10 degrees… But we think it gives a really wonderful finish.’

‘We only use apples grown here in our orchard,’ adds Sophie. ‘It is zero spray, hand-picked, hand-pressed… uber-organic.’ Sparkling wine is also in process, something that takes a minimum of seven years from planting the first vine to filling an actual bottle. ‘Eventually, our goal is to produce sparkling wine, still white and still rosé, as well as the juices and cider.’ Completing the cycle, the residue from cider and wine making goes onto the compost heap, which feeds the vegetable garden… which in turn feeds Sophie and Panu’s family and anyone who comes to stay.

Upon our arrival at The Coach House (above), a characterful two-bedroom conversion full of reclaimed wood, polished concrete, antiques sourced from France, Spain and Morocco, Pooky lamps and some very pretty wallpaper by Tess Newall, we were greeted by an enormous hamper of courgettes, tomatoes, potatoes, broad beans, peas and fragrant mint from the kitchen garden. A further hamper of cherries, apples and peaches was beside it, plus cakes from a local bakery, as well as a collection of meats from the butcher in Ilminster (where Alice Temperley has her outlet). We drank as much Thornfalcon apple juice as we could get our hands on. The bathrooms were full of essential-oil enhanced products from sister Mary Temperley’s brand MAKE (the citrus, lavender, eucalyptus and lemongrass hand wash smelt so heavenly I immediately ordered it online), which has its base at nearby Burrow Hill Cider Farm, home to Somerset Cider Brandy.

As it was early summer, we spent a lot of time with the children in the garden, trying to stop them from picking underripe walnuts from the tree in our private meadow (sorry), collecting eggs and wandering through the woods up to the bucolic two-acre lake — fringed with bulrushes as lakes always are in storybooks — to see swans splash about with their fluffy cygnets. We enjoyed a bit of splashing ourselves in the lakeside hot tub, a nod to Panu’s Finnish heritage. Even our youngest, age two, loved the sauna (thoughtfully set to a low enough temperature for little ones) and cold shower afterwards on repeat.

The aforementioned Vine Hut, designed by Sophie, is decorated in a similarly vibrant, Matilda Goad meets French rustic style, with reclaimed wood floors and walls, a kitchen painted in Edward Bulmer’s Invisible Green and a bedroom, beside the sitting room with log burner, adorned in Lake August nasturtium wallpaper. Lastly, the newly converted Lambing Shed sleeps two, with a similar set up, plus an outdoor wood-fired, wood-clad bath among the apple trees. All three retreats have 400-threadcount bedlinens and feather-and-duck down mattress toppers on kingsize beds.

A further cabin, recently spruced up with a bedroom, kitchen, sitting room and bathroom, is offered to those wanting a placement via the WWOOF (World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms) scheme. ‘For those taking part, it's a way of seeing the world and being part of a local community,’ Sophie explains. ‘WWOOFers work for around five hours a day, with the afternoons off, in return for room and board. We've met really wonderful people this way — some who've never done anything like it before and others with a particularly keen interest in organic farming — even couples from Australia and New Zealand.’

A simple wander around the farm reveals plenty of other buildings ripe for conversion — Sophie and Panu have big plans. When I asked them if their move to create this idyll and share it, too, was a business or a lifestyle choice, they told me it was both. ‘It’s a massive labour of love,’ says Sophie. ‘There’s something special about what happens when Nature and the land come together with the alchemy of the creative process. We want to make it even more special because we live here, too — this is our home. It's a place that we absolutely love. Having people to stay is a wonderful way to share it, while helping to finance development.’

She wonders at how ‘every day here, something changes. I’ll go up to London for a day and I'll come back and myriad flowers will have bloomed. Even if I've only been away for a short time, I like to pad around the vegetable garden and see what's happened.’

A night at Thornfalcon starts from £125 (gypsy caravan add on available from £70); visit www.thornfalcon.com for more information and to book

There is a case to be made that Marrakech, Morocco, is the world capital of hotels. From boutique riads in the Medina to adobe estates in the desert, the variety and quality is probably unmatched anywhere. Five of my favourite hotels in the whole world are here — and more are popping up all the time.

Easily the most talked about opening this year is the brand-new Jnane Rumi — and for good reason. Or several reasons. I am still, many weeks after my visit, haunted by the hotel’s signature scent, a clear oud (blended with secret spices). I have been craving the marvellous meals I had at tile tables by the pool, shaded by bougainvillea and nodding palm fronds. In fact, the grounds — with a grassy garden dotted with cane chairs and tasselled umbrellas that feels like the set for an enchanted Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, a stony olive grove and a fire pit — probably do not get mentioned enough. That is because the interiors have immediately become a source of obsession online.

If, from the outside, the structure seems to follow classical, rational design (albeit with petrol-blue terracotta-tiled roofs), the décor within each room feels original, site specific and inspired. In my bedroom, a mustard-coloured wall seemed to swoop down, Dalí-like, to a fireplace, where a cherubic marble Don Quixote on his horse sat on the chimneypiece. On the far wall, an antique carved wood lintel shrouded a reading nook and the cathedral-domed skylight made the bathroom look like a Roman emperor’s. It was dazzling — as, I imagine, are all the other, totally different suites.

The cozy communal sitting room seemed at first more sedate, but, on closer examination, kept revealing delightful details, from the tapestry (of, perhaps, weight-lifting Egyptian Pharaohs) by French-born artist Louis Barthé-lemy to the well-chosen collections of books piled here and there. Ditto the Rumi bar, a pink-walled snug with a monumental brass chandelier pendant that scattered soft light on deep cushioned chairs. Yet even as I say that and try to describe the smells and the sights, I seem to get further away from the finger-snapping fizzing feeling of the place.

I wish I could sit down at the corner table outside and tell you more about it. Perhaps over a sizzling seafood tagine or some of the hotel’s spectacular Moroccan wines. Meet you there?

Rooms at Jnane Rumi from €500 a night (00 212 666 208 767)

This feature originally appeared in the July 2, 2025, issue of Country Life. Click here for more information on how to subscribe

I can hear the groans from here, behind my laptop: ‘Christ, she’s writing about New York again — doesn’t she have anything better to do; somewhere else to be?’ Well, no, I don’t, because I’ve said it before and I will say it again, New York is my miracle cure, the city I run to when I’m low on energy and low on ideas. It’s like a therapist, sugary snack and party soundtrack all rolled into one.

Besides energy and ideas, the other thing New York isn’t lacking is hotels and among the newest is The Manner, in Manhattan’s SoHo district. A quick backstory: it is part of Standard International — the parent company of The Standard and Bunhouse Hotels brands — which was acquired by Hyatt Hotels in the Autumn of 2024 (at roughly the same time that The Manner first opened its doors to guests).

The name refers to the ‘manner’ of hospitality that Standard International’s executive chairman, Amar Lalvani, favours on his own travels. ‘At any time of day, you can help yourself to everything,’ he has said in previous interviews about the property, ‘from a cappuccino to a newspaper to a window seat on all the city views. It’s for the global traveller who appreciates art, architecture and design.’

The rooms

There are 97 rooms and suites that range in size from ‘King’ to ‘Duplex Penthouse’ whose dramatic crimson-colour carpets and upholstery were inspired by American fashion designer Halston’s Olympic Tower offices (above, located in Midtown).

I stayed in a ‘Deluxe King Studio Suite’, with king size bed, two bathrooms, a dining table and bijou sitting room, resplendent in shades of ochre, emerald green and lapis lazuli. There’s a chandelier designed by Milan-based Hannes Peer, but no TV. ‘We didn’t want to ruin the aesthetic with a wall-mounted TV,’ Lalvani told the Financial Times last year, adding that the majority of guests stream shows and films on their own iPads and laptops (and come to think of it, has anyone ever successfully managed to watch anything on a hotel TV?).

The colour scheme is so all consuming — like being cocooned inside a richly-decorated jewellery box — that I didn’t step out onto the Juliet balcony until the second day — only to discover that to the left I could see One World Trade Center and to the right, the Empire State Building.

That said it never feels like too much. I’ve written before about my preference for more traditional, erring on the edge of chintzy, hotels, but I relished coming back to The Manner so much at the end of each busy day that I can only conclude that the more design-led hotels I’ve previously frequented — and dismissed — just didn’t get it quite right. It feels fun (see the more than 5,000 bubble-like tiles that stud the lift wall in the entrance hall) and grown-up all at the same time — a tricky balance to get right.

On a mezzanine-style floor, floating atop the entrance-way, you’ll find The Apartment, a guests-only living room that’s open 24 hours a day. You can choose to eat breakfast here, read the papers, work or welcome friends for an aperitivo and snack. It’s a splendidly clever — and seemingly so obvious — idea that feels a world away from your identikit hotel lobby and was popular with nearly everyone staying at the same time I was.

Eating and drinking

There is The Otter, an all-day restaurant whose space is dominated by a wraparound mural, painted by Elvira Solana. And Sloane’s, a decadent cocktail bar with double height ceilings which hosted a Marc Jacobs post-fashion show extravaganza back in February.

In Spring 2025, a coffee spot and bar opened on the rooftop, open exclusively to guests before 5pm.

The food is overseen by James Beard Award-nominee Alex Stupak; coincidentally, James Beard (1903–85) pioneered television cooking shows and mentored generations of chefs. His home in Greenwich Village is now the heart of the foundation set up in his name, where people can come to appreciate the talents of emerging and established cooks — and it’s where Country Life hosted its inaugural New York event earlier this year.

Stupak might not be a glossy name in the same league as someone such as Jean-Georges at The Mark hotel, but his seafood-heavy menu at The Otter was well-reviewed in The New Yorker magazine.

Who is it for?

Well-travelled couples who appreciate art, design and colour — and anyone who wants to make the most of their time in the city and not faff around with typical hotel check-in and check-out procedures (instead, your credit card details are taken at the time of booking and the card charged at the end of your stay without you ever being handed a bill).

It’s worth noting that the hotel is not open to any children under the age of 16.

What gives it the ‘wow’ factor

The attention to detail, from the mustard-velvet Lenys World slippers in the rooms, to the bespoke furniture.

The one thing we’d change

There are no coffee and tea-making facilities in the room which will likely alarm British travellers.

Rooms at The Manner start from $899 a night. Click here for more information and to book

Ah, Sandringham. This Norfolk estate has long been steeped in royal history. The deathplace of George V. The birthplace of George VI. It is here that Elizabeth II delivered the first televised Christmas message, and it is now a residence of His Majesty The King. As of this month, you too can stay on this most celebrated slice of Norfolk, courtesy of The Folly.

Available as an exclusive rental through Oliver’s Travels, The Folly is a turreted retreat set in the estate’s private grounds. Surrounded by centuries-old woodland, it has three bedrooms and two bathrooms set across two separate wings. It can sleep six people with a minimum stay of three nights, priced upwards of £3,000.

Originally built as a haven for ladies to retire for a cup of tea, it is still the perfect place to unwind with a hot (or cold) beverage. The wrap-around balcony and turret make it ideal for sipping and pondering while looking out at all nature has to offer. The interiors are plenty intriguing too, with many of the property’s period features — including hand-finished floors, stone hearths and arched entryways — preserved.

Oliver Bell of Oliver’s Travels, says: ‘We’ve always championed holidays that are a little out of the ordinary — with a portfolio full of heritage-rich and characterful homes, The Folly is a natural fit. This property isn’t just a place to stay — it’s an experience steeped in history, comfort, and quiet grandeur. We’re excited to open the doors to such a unique retreat, and can’t wait to see the stories that unfold here.’

The best part? It has the entire Sandringham Estate on the doorstep. That includes a 20,000-acre parkland and royal gardens, all of which beg to be explored. There is a seasonal forest school for children to attend too, and four-legged friends are welcome guests who may enjoy the plentiful outdoors on offer. It also has a BBQ and private garden. Sandringham House is minutes away too, and open to visit between April and October. For a stay worthy of royalty, look no further.

The Folly, Sandringham, is available to rent via Oliver’s Travels.