I get by with a little help from my friends. For me, it’s the Joe Cocker version that lands hardest. The immediacy in those opening bars, the strength of Jimmy Page’s guitar solos. It’s indicative of a sound from a different era. That’s what I needed: to escape to a different era. The nights had gotten long and daylight was fast becoming a distant memory to my work-embattled mind.
I was headed for check-in at the Boston Harbour Hotel, a recipient of both the Forbes Five-Star and AAA Five-Diamond awards. The hotel sits on Rowes Wharf, formerly a neighbourhood called South Battery. Created by early settlers during the seventeenth century, one of the city’s most prolific businessmen, John Rowe, purchased the land in 1764 and put up the original Rowes Wharf which was extended into Boston Harbour.
As we emerge from lockdown and get back to normality, our editor, Laith Al-Kaisy, has a lot of travelling to make up for. Here, he puts together his hit-list for the next year or two.
‘Nantucket: Classic American Style 30 Miles Out to Sea’ by authors Liza Gershman and Carrie Nieman Culpepper features natural photographic portraits and environmental stills so captivating, you can almost hear the waves crashing off the North Shore.
Iain Beaumont is the founder and Managing Director of Venues and Ventures. Since ditching the City, Iain has worked on some on England’s grandest country estates and leading luxury venues, refining his eye for spotting new opportunities and helping businesses realise their potential.
500 miles away, our country is at war. You wouldn’t imagine it here though, where despite warnings of terrorist attacks, the only immediate threat is running out of champagne. Antalya’s coastline is a tinny concentration of the photo albums you thumbed through as a child. There’s a sense of nostalgia and familiarity here, one that typifies the great British holiday: that hot-but-not-too-hot, different-but-not-too-different compromise to get on a plane and test our burdening Britishness against cultures that are generally friendlier, happier, less self-loathing, and not half as pretentious. But tourism has changed a lot recently, as has the world, and the simpering irony of sending a luxury-travel writer to this corner of…
The first Shangri-La I stayed at was in China, where the hotel looms on the upper floors of Beijing’s World Trade Centre complex. Not exactly subtle. The one in Paris – my favourite – is set in a Napoleonic family mansion, where you can wake up to an eyeful of the Eiffel.
“Come and enjoy the island for a couple of days,” read the invitation from Isla Sa Ferradura, Ibiza’s only private rock in the ocean, a property so exclusive that it eschews advertising for word-of-mouth and deters any other undesirables with its bum-clenching £200,000-a-week price tag.
It’d been a while since I’d stayed in London. Even longer since I’d travelled anywhere without the family in tow. But this hotel visit was excuse enough to forget about responsibilities and pandemics, hop on a train and head to the Big Smoke for a day of overdue excess. Navigating the post-lockdown hoi polloi is a proper schlep. But thankfully, stepping into the Kimpton Fitzroy is like being welcomed back to 2019, a time before mass hysteria, masks and 2-metre rules. And what a welcome. The Kimpton is a London hotel in the most traditional sense: a landmark building whose grand facade is punctuated by the statues of four British…
The year was 1989. George H. W. Bush had been elected President with 53.4 percent of the popular vote. The Exxon Valdez was spilling 11 million gallons of crude oil into the Prince William Sound. And I was in the back of my mother’s Mini Cooper, none the wiser to any of it. We had been bundled into the old Mini at horrendous o’clock in the morning by my dear mother, who was resolute in her intentions to make it into the stone circle before sunrise. But, even as a precocious six-year-old, I knew nothing of the politics and social battles that had raged for the past decade. Stonehenge has…
From the outset, it commands attention; a behemoth of a complex in a street of otherwise uninspiring architecture.
After two nights spent crisscrossing the urban metropolis of Bangkok trying to catch up with old friends, I was rather glad to be arriving on the tropical island of Koh Samui.
Five percent. Only five percent of the ocean has been topographically imaged. This means that 65% of our planet, where you and I live, is unknown. We’ve mapped Mercury and have an incredibly detailed “Idiot’s Guide to the Moon”, complete with ramblers maps which show you how to trek around the international claims of the US and Soviet governments. But comparatively, we know very little of the abyssal plains and continental shelves.
It’s easy to miss The Academy. Standing elegant yet inconspicuous on Gower Street, Bloomsbury, the only thing hinting that you’ve arrived at a hotel is a sign for The Alchemy Bar outside. Comprised of five Georgian townhouses, The Academy’s semi-recent redesign was overseen by Alexandra Champalimaud, whose clients also include The Dorchester and The Carlyle. Characteristically, then, while there’s still a nostalgic sense of l’originale, the design, themes and palette here are quintessentially modern and boutiquey. I hate to tarnish or expose anyone for having a ‘concept’, but The Academy’s evocation of its literary locale is both befitting and tasteful, with novels by the Bloomsbury Group—Woolf, Forster, Keynes—adorning pockets of…
It was forty-five minutes past the witching hour and all was tranquil. The torrential rain that had marred our otherwise scenic drive had gladly ceased leaving Marylebone Lane awash with the glow from the ornate street lamps. Spirits were high, bolstered by the recent nuptials at the Powell Burke wedding in North London that very evening. By this point in the proceedings, I had imbibed enough to play Summertime by Ella Fitzgerald & Louis Armstrong in some sort of homage to My Fair Lady. Which incidentally was actually shot on neighbouring Wimpole Street. I abhor anyone playing music on their mobile phone in public. Unless it’s the First Lady of…
I should start with full disclosure. I was born and bred in Wiltshire. With its rolling chalk download and grazing farmland, it really was an incredibly wonderful and rural place to grow up. I remember hot summers at the Marlborough Jazz Festival and trudging through Savernake Forest, winter walks around Avebury and Stonehenge, and weekends spent at Bowood House and atop Silbury Hill. So deep are the county’s agricultural roots that our houses at school were named Stonehenge, Whitehorse, Ridgeway and Sarum. So, when I decided to spend a long weekend at West Barn Lodge, near Favant, it felt more like a homecoming. We booked our stay with Premier Cottages….
With just under three months until the start of the Rugby World Cup, excitement is building in the Japanese prefecture of Shizuoka, which will be hosting four of the matches – including Ireland v Japan (28 September) and Scotland v Russia (09 October) – at its Ecopa Stadium. Only an hour from Tokyo by bullet train, this stunning region is home to the iconic Mount Fuji, the beautiful Izu Peninsula – often described as Japan’s Riviera – and some of the best food in Japan, making it the perfect choice for rugby fans this autumn. To help visitors make the most of their time in the prefecture, here is a…
New York was imprinted on my heart back in the day of my early mad ad career working on a transatlantic airline account. The regular pit-stops gave me unbelievable bragging rights, but as a quick time check, on my last visit I was privileged enough to sit above the clouds drinking cocktails at Windows on The World on top of the North Tower in Downtown Manhattan. Sadly not a vista I can ever re-visit. But as many moons have passed since that view was obliterated and New York’s landscape changed forever, I was super hyped to share this mesmerizing city with my family now in tow and hopeful that NYC…
Located at the foothills of Morocco’s High Atlas Mountains, Kasbah Tamadot, Sir Richard Branson’s luxury retreat and part of the Virgin Limited Edition portfolio, is offering guests the opportunity to immerse themselves in true Berber culture with a newly launched ‘Authentically Berber Experience’. Morocco’s Berber communities are renowned for their kind and noble nature and their culture forms an incredibly important part of Morocco’s rich history. At Kasbah Tamadot, guests are already welcomed with true Berber hospitality as 98% of its staff are from the local Berber communities. Guests now staying at Kasbah Tamadot will have the opportunity to learn about the traditions and culture by immersing themselves in a…
When I dwelled in the soot-covered streets of central London, I didn’t really have much need to pay dues to a members’ club. London is hectic, in a way that makes even the most confident and athletic appear grey and lifeless over time. But that wasn’t me, babe. I was living out of a certain hotel on Brook Street circa 2007 and all was gin-soaked and well with the world. Except, quietly, it wasn’t, was it. BNP Paribas was quietly blocking withdrawals from two of its hedge funds. The Dow Jones peaked at 14,164.53 and then started to decline faster than Gordon Gekko’s prison sentence. Shortly after the US bailed its players out to the tune of $800 billion (that we know of), the European ripple was in…