Travel

Mountain Exposure – Zermatt

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I don’t know where to start. It creeps up on me. I could be placating my way through a board meeting, or having drinks with friends, and then I just lose all interest. The situation, whatever it is, completely ceases to amaze me. Life just loses its colour. I try to reassure myself, whilst hopelessly attempting to coax the addiction monkey off my shoulder and back into its bloody cage. I just can’t get enough powder. Before we go any further, and I get a call from my mother (probably to enquire into the quality, rather than express concern) I want to make it clear that I’m talking about snow….

Gansevoort New York

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The Gansevoort Hotel’s new Park Avenue location is, in simplest terms, stunning. A sublime combination of the Hotel Group’s standard five-star service combined with a chic boutique interior. Just when you have mastered the layout, there’s another sultry speakeasy-style bar lurking in the shadows. We take a tour with Hotel Manager Suzi DeAngelis. The luxury hotels of Manhattan have long been a staple of the skyline. With the Plaza, Oriental and Four Seasons deeply imbedded in the luxury traveller’s zeitgeist, one might assume the big players have little to contend with. But they would be very, very wrong. Many hotels spring up in Manhattan offering, boutique chic and pop-up experiences,…

A Night of Unreality

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Laith Al-Kaisy on the search for salvation. Reviewing high-end hotels is a curse, a pox of the profession. I don’t know how I will ever stay in a crap hotel again. In fact, if it comes to it, you’ll probably find me hanging from one of the fixtures or overdosed in the bathtub with a note reading ‘They only had prosecco’. I recently stayed at a four-star in Bristol, which really has no business marketing itself as such. The easy assumption to make is that promises were made, money was passed, and trousers were dropped—a bit like the average customer’s stay. It was awful. A couple of weeks later, I…

The Goring

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When you say ‘family run hotel’ in anything other than an RP or cut glass accent, one conjures up images of a portly house-wife serving highly questionable shepherds pie from a guest house in Dursley. Perish the thought my well-healed well to do’s. Deep in the heart of royal London is the last family built and run hotel in the city. In 1910 otto Richard Goring opened the ho- tel that was to become the darling of The Queen Mother. now under the tutelage of Jeremy Goring, the hotel has earned itself the commercial license to print money that is, a Royal Warrant. ‘God Bless You Ma-am’. It’s locality to…

Chamonix

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Victor, the world’s first marketplace for empty leg private jet travel, is partnering with Shangri-La Paris to offer the ultimate luxury experience this Christmas season. Travel by private jet from London to Le Bourget – straight into the heart of Paris avoiding airport queues and hassle. Based on a two-night minimum stay, the Ultimate Noël en Famille Christmas package is designed to make the most of a holiday spent in Paris.

The Flying Palace

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When Iqbal Wahhab OBE stepped down as director of the Cinnamon Club, the London restaurant brigade knew it was a move to pastures greener.

Andermatt – Summer in the mountains

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It’s bittersweet, really. On the one hand, the weather is always going to be much more agreeable than here in Blighty. Their green and luscious meadows are filled with Swiss chocolate and beer, and you can slip in and out of your banker’s office in Geneva en route. On the other hand, there is no snow. Well, not none – there is some at the top, up by the pointy bit of the mountain, but you can’t really ski on it. Not just because it is wildly dangerous, but also because it is frowned upon by the authority-obliging Swiss. No matter how hard I try, I stare up at the…

ANDERMATT

SWISS ALPS