Wander(lust)

My Top 10 Hotels, Thus Far

To me hotels are an integral part of any travel experience. My criteria are straightforward: The hotel must be architecturally interesting; incorporate high-quality design and materials; offer great service; be hip or dignified (but not too too); and go for $300 or less per night. Each month I eagerly await my new travel magazines to see if there are any new gems to be plucked, and far more often than not I’m disappointed.

First, the hotels touted in Travel + Leisure and Conde Nast Traveler (to cite the biggies) are too expensive for my budget: Since when did $400 or $500 a night become the norm? And, truth be told, it’s not only my budget---I’d be willing to splurge for a transcendent experience, but not for what is basically a business hotel with a lot of concierge or spa services I’m not going to use.

Second, the hotels are often in places like Canouan, Dubai, Cancun, Taiwan, and the Maldives---all places that, for one reason or another, are not at the top of my personal list of future destinations.

Third, I seek out unusual, smaller, and often newer properties that often don’t show up in the guidebooks or the Travel + Leisure and Conde Nast Traveler annual readers’ polls of top hotels. Those polls are, by and large, retreads of the previous year’s list, with a few new properties. In Granada, for instance, it’s a sure bet that the top pick will always be the Parador de Granada, which is situated, admittedly, on a coveted spot within the romantic Alhambra grounds, one of my favorite places in the world. But why stay at a parador that charges $310 a night and is booked a year in advance, yet hasn’t invested in its infrastructure in years and has less than stellar service, when you can stay at a nearby five-star hotel that is a luxurious and well-conceived refurbishment of the old Convent of Santa Paula, yet charges only $150? You can always visit the Alhambra on a night tour. Similarly, when in Lisbon, why follow the readers’ poll and stay at the oh-so-predictable Four Seasons Hotel Ritz for $452 a night, when you can stay at the sleek, contemporary Solar do Castelo, built within St. Jorge's Castle walls on the site of the former Alcáçova Palace kitchens, for $250?

It does takes some sleuthing to unearth the gems. And I must confess that I’m secretly pleased (and smug) when Travel + Leisure or one of the other travel magazines touts a find several months later, as was the case with Solar do Castelo and La Sacristia. Finally, two caveats: Properties often change ownership or undergo other revisions, so I strongly suggest that you check out the hotel’s Web site, as well as the comments of recent guests at tripadvisor.com. Also, particularly with the larger hotels, you will need to hunt around on Travelocity or other search engines to get a discounted room rate. 

Following is my current top 10 list, in no particular order:

1.    La Sacristia  (Tarifa, Spain)

2.    Hotel Les Ateliers de l'Image (St-Remy-de-Provence, France)

3.   La Casa de los Milagros  (Oaxaca, Mexico)

4.    Hotel Monasterio  (Cusco, Peru)

5.    Villa Sumaya  (Lake Atitlan, Guatemala)

6.    Hotel Gault  (Montreal, Canada)

7.    AC Palacio de Santa Paula  (Granada, Spain)

8.    Hacienda Puerta Campeche (Campeche, Mexico)

9.    Castle Hotel "Auf Schoenburg"  (Oberwesel, Germany)

10.  Solar do Castelo (Lisbon, Portugal)

Quintessential Paris

Hands down, my favorite city in the world. If you love Paris, devour Edmund White's Le Flâneur and George Orwell's Down and Out in Paris and London if you haven't already had the pleasure. With immense gratitude to Monsieurs White and Orwell and countless others, my quintessential Paris experiences:

 

L’as du Fallafel, on rue des Rosiers in the Marais for the best falafel sandwiches, preferably with eggplant and eaten in the nearby park

The Musée Picasso for the world's best and most manageable collection of his paintings and the lovely wrought-iron railings, light fixtures, and benches by Diego Giacometti

Touristy, yes, but obligatory nonetheless: a boat ride along the Seine on one of the Bateaux-Mouches at night when Notre Dame and other buildings are illuminated

A trek out to Père-Lachaise Cemetery to ponder what has been deposited lately on the graves of Oscar Wilde and Jim Morrison, and to pay homage to Chopin, Isadora Duncan, Richard Wright, the Communards, and others

Mint tea at the Mosquée de Paris

The fish-eye view of the Seine from Square du Vert-Galant

The Musée Rodin for its incredible collection, sculpture gardens, and Rilke connections

Sainte Chapelle, particularly for its upper chapel's virtual walls of 13th-century stained glass---the largest such surface in the world---with its incomparable winey reds and cobalt blues (photo at right)

Rue de la Seine for its art galleries, Cosi (yes, the original one, which is nothing like its siblings) for lunch, Fish for dinner, and other assorted charms

The Musée de Cluny for its medieval architecture and the Lady and the Unicorn tapestries

A concert at the small, squat Romanesque church of Saint-Julien le Pauvre

The stark, evocative Mémorial des Martyrs Français de la Déportation de 1945 at the far end of the Ile de la Cité

The Musée d'Orsay for its train-station setting, enormous clock, and collection of masterpieces by the Impressionists, Fauves, and others

Berthillon ice cream, ideally taken from its flagship store on the Ile St.-Louis and eaten al fresco 

Wandering and shopping on the tiny Ile St.-Louis, particularly at dusk

Dinner at 404, 69 rue des Gravilliers in the 3eme, for its sumptuous tagines, exotic Moroccan decor, and hip Arabic grooves

The Arènes de Lutéce, an often-overlooked Roman amphitheater that now hosts the soccer games of kids from the surrounding neighborhood

The symmetry and calm of the Place des Vosges, followed by meandering in the Marais

The Cathédrale de Notre-Dame from its many angles and in as many lights and moods as possible

Waiting for the End of the World

The big Y2K scare that turned out to be for naught—I wonder how historians will write about it. But, lest we forget, it did hold a certain frightening, yet thrilling, potential to rewrite our lives. It was in that spirit that John and I traveled to Florence for New Year’s Eve 1999, reasoning that if chaos were to reign and our bank accounts to be frozen, we might as well be in Italy when it happened.

Back that September, my mother-in-law had supplied us with cans of Sterno, a campstove, flares, Clif bars, and everything else we needed to be survivalists extraordinaire. But we quietly, stealthily plotted  to travel to Tuscany over New Year’s. This plan was initially met with protests by both our families, but we calmed their fears as we made reservations to travel to Florence, San Gimignano, and Siena. We arrived in Florence on December 28 and settled into the Loggiato dei Serviti.

Over the next two days, we traversed Florence, from the Duomo to the Medici Chapels to the perfect 11th-century chapel of San Miniato, high above the city. We were humbled by Fra Angelico’s ethereal frescoes at San Marco and by Masaccio’s haunting “Expulsion of Adam and Eve” at the Capella Brancacci. We ate semifreddi at Vivoli and bought marbled paper. But we couldn’t find a decent meal. 

I was a vegetarian at the time, and most restaurants in Florence tend toward the other extreme—wild boar, duck, rabbit, and the ubiquitous bistecca alla florentina. At long last, on December 30, we found Baldovino, a bright, artsy trattoria on the Piazza Santa Croce, run by David Gardner, a transplant from Scotland. We had two creative pastas, a perfect wild-mushroom risotto, a great bottle of wine, and were hooked. As we left, we asked the hostess if we could make reservations for the next night. “Ah, I’m sorry,” she said, “but we’re closed tomorrow. But there is a prix-fixe dinner at our sister restaurant, Beccofino. Here’s their card; have your hotel call and see if there are still any spots left.”

We rushed back to the hotel. The concierge called and miraculously secured us the last two places. The cost was $150 per person, cash—she made doubly sure we understood that part. Apparently David was taking no chances in case everyone tried to use their credit cards after midnight to pay for their meal. The next day, we took turns taking cash out of the ATM, aware that these might be our last withdrawals for quite a while. Well, we weren't averse to manual labor; we could always pick grapes and eke out a living as modern-day serfs if need be.

Beccofino has just opened that May and was already a huge hit. Dressed to the nines, we sat down promptly at 9 pm, and immediately knew that our money would be well spent. The dining room was modern, with tables well spaced apart, striking flower arrangements, and an open kitchen. Glass windows opened onto the Arno, just steps away. We began with a terrine of goose-liver paté with onions braised in port. Next came tortelli stuffed with chestnuts, served with a ragu of pigeon and black truffles. This was followed by the main course of a roast rack of lamb with whole fennel drizzled in balsamic vinaigrette. Dessert was a champagne and chocolate sorbet with lemon sauce. Each course was accompanied by wonderfully chosen wines, including a Chianti Classico Riserva ’96 Fonterutoli and a Saturnes ’89 Chateau de Rayne. Needless to say, I abandoned my vegetarian ways with little ado as soon as the paté arrived and haven’t looked back since. 

We finished eating just as the clock struck midnight, an action timed perfectly by the servers. Along with the other diners, John and I streamed out of the restaurant, champagne glasses in hand, to shout “Buon Capo d'Anno” and kiss a few strangers. We stood on the nearby bridge and looked up and down the Arno—there were similar scenes in either direction, with family members of all ages toasting each other, setting off little firecrackers, and blowing paper streamers. We repaired back to Beccofino’s bar for more champagne (this was, after all, a one-in-a-lifetime occasion) and eventually made our way through the throngs of people the Piazza del Duomo to the hotel. We were ambivalent that we’d have to return to school and jobs in a few days, that we wouldn’t be breaking our backs over that year's grape harvest, but in the end we were happy—very happy—that the world hadn’t ended.