Earlier this month we wrote about how the Hotel Cipriani in Venice was undergoing an 50th "anniversary facelift", but too bad the Wall Street Journal's Finicky Traveler got there before the new look was completed.
Our fave hotel critic Laura Landro spent a few nights there and the opening of her review says it all:
Our suite at Venice's legendary Hotel Cipriani has stained mauve carpet, ratty faux-bamboo furniture and a platform bed looking into a whirlpool tub-for-two that seems not to have been scrubbed out since the 1970s. We feel positively transported -- to a honeymoon motel in the Poconos.
Our roving correspondent Monica Guy has recently blessed the rains down in Africa--South Africa--and is giving us the scoop this week on the Cape Town hotel scene. Have a question or a suggestion? Let us know and we'll do our best to answer it. Enjoy.
How the other half live. Or rather, not half, but the small minority of wealthy (almost all white) travellers who stay in the Mount Nelson Hotel, Cape Town's Grande Dame.
The drive up to the hotel entrance (a guard salutes you on the way in) is via a tree-lined road through their vast, landscaped grounds - smoother than most of Cape Town's main roads. A huge, white columned building, and inside, a marble-floored entrance hall complete with antique décor, oil paintings, stuffed animal heads and suited butlers.
We didn't stay overnight so we can't tell you more about the rooms. But we did try out the restaurant, however, which is allegedly the best in Cape Town for Cape Malay-style fine dining.
Once again, HotelChatter contributing editor Tim Leffel is moving around Mexico, checking out the hotel scene in the colonial heartland. If you have a question about where to stay in Guanajuato or San Miguel de Allende, hit us on the tipline, or just comment below, and we will do our best to get you some sort of answer. Enjoy.
Prior to 2006, Casa de Sierra Nevada was already the top hotel in town. But then the Orient-Express company took over, making it their second hotel in Mexico after Maroma in the Riviera Maya. They got straight to work, sprucing up the place and renovating the main restaurant (in what was once the home of the local archbishop). While they were at it, they bought a cooking school just down the street.
Two years later they're still adding on to their collection of rooms in different buildings. A new spa will be finished next month and some additional guest rooms will up the total from the current 31. The newest section of the hotel (for now) is Casa Limon, where six suites surround a courtyard, a library, and a swimming pool set in a grassy lawn.
The video tour here is a trip through one of the Colonial Room Suites in that Casa Limon section. With this one--number 444--you get your private plunge pool/whirlpool on a terrace, two big flat-screen TVS, an iPod dock, and a spacious double-vanity bath with separate tub and shower--both lit by a skylight.
Naturally, the room comes stocked with all the pampering goodies: thick towels, robes, Molton Brown toiletries, and soft cotton sheets with a high thread count.
Published rates are roughly $300 to $600, with the suite featured here at the top of that range.
Our Super Secret Hotel Maven network extends far and wide and thanks to another SSHM, we have a mini-guide to Russia's luxe hotels--perfect for ballers, high-rollers and Russian mobsters. It's a mini-guide because it's really only a few hotels in St. Petersburg and Moscow. Up next: The Grand Hotel Europe. Enjoy.
Now on to my favorite hotel in St. Petersburg, Grand Hotel Europe. I actually didn't want to like this place, because well, it's an Orient Express property. And frankly, when I think of Orient Express, I think of Ben-Gay stank old ladies. The hotel is thankfully in a bustling part of St. Petersburg.
Before I made my way over to this area, known as Nevsky Prospekt, I thought that all of St. Petersburg was sitting at home, scared to come out... but no! People shop here! They go on walks! They go out to eat! Before I even saw the building itself, just seeing the neighborhood of this hotel had me at hello, but those hellos just kept coming.
Yesterday we wondered if Travel+Leisure had made a mistake when they deemed the Four Seasons Sydney the #1 hotel in Australia when clearly The Observatory Hotel had achieved a higher score of 87.41 to the Four Season's 86.93.
Today we have our answer from T+L:
You're right - the Observatory Hotel in Sydney is, in fact, the number one hotel in Australia in the T+L 500 2008. We've updated the list on www.travelandleisure.com/tl500 so the correct information is available online.
To be honest, both hotels are deserving of the #1 spot. After all, the ranking scores are very close. But in the end, it depends on what you prefer. The Four Seasons rises up in the Sydney skyline to give you killer views of the opera house and the Harbour. It's also located just near Circular Quay, the central business district and the Rocks, a shopping and bar area on George Street.
The Observatory is a smaller hotel on a quiet street and has an older feel but it also has the best service we have ever encountered in a hotel. Aside from the famous high tea, not to be missed at the Observatory is the Day Spa and the large indoor pool with a domed ceiling painted to resemble a Southern Hemisphere sky "filled with twinkling stars."
The New York Public Library has recently agreed to sell its building and property for the West 53rd Street branch, The Donnell, to Orient-Express Hotels for $59 million.
Normally, that would just be another hotel transaction in the news but what's different about this sale is that the library will still maintain a presence on the hotel's first and underground floors. The rest of the floors will be for the hotel, with five of those having direct access to the storied 21 Club on 52nd street.
The sale may strike some as an odd mix of culture and commerce, but the library said it had little choice because the branch, built in 1955, was in dire need of renovations that the system could ill afford.
But have no fear. Guests won't have to check in amongst the stacks and deal with stares from mustachioed librarians. The hotel and the library will both have separate entrances and will be divided by a wall. The hotel will have 150 rooms but unlike a free public library, rooms will start at $750 a night.
And since it's connected to the 21 Club, the hotel name will have 21 somewhere in the name. A 2011 opening is expected. If you can't wait until then to sleep amongst the Dewey Decimal system, check into the Library Hotel on 41st and Madison.
While there will be a restaurant on the top floor, a hotel nightclub in the lobby is out of the question. And that's exactly the sentiment of Orient Express' CEO Paul White who said, "We don't want to be like everybody else," he added. "Why not share a building with a major institution like the New York Public Library? I'd rather have them in my basement than a nightclub."
The NY Times headed to Riviera Maya in Mexico to "check in and check out" the Maroma Resort and Spa, a 65-room hotel and a four-bedroom villa.
Reviewer Geraldine Fabrikant informs us that five years ago, Maroma was just a boutique hotel with about 32 rooms. Then Orient-Express Hotels bought the place, added new rooms, two swimming pools and the Kinan Spa. When Hurricane Wilma walloped Mexico in 2005, Orient Express forked over $16 million to make repairs and finish the upgrades.
In short, no expense has been spared here which is always nice to know when traveling to Mexico, if you know what we mean.
HotelChatter's Senior Editor Juliana borrowed a page from vintage Britney Spears' 2004 playbook and got hitched after a brief engagement. However, there were some differences. One, Juliana dated this guy for four years as opposed to three months. Also, Juliana's now-husband is neither a background dancer, nor baby daddy, nor a failed white rapper. Lastly, Juliana and spouse went a little further than Brit and K-Fed's honeymoon in Fiji by spending their first few weeks of newlywed bliss in Sydney, Australia with a sidetrip to the Whitsunday Islands. For the rest of the week, she'll be telling you where she stayed and whether or not it was honeymoon appropriate. So, if you have any questions about honeymoon or Australia travel, send 'em our way.
Unfortunately, we checked out of our first hotel in Sydney, the Park Hyatt, all too soon, as we missed Sylvester Stallone and his goumbas allegedly throwing growth hormones things out of their hotel window. So you must be wondering if our next hotel had such excitement? Hmm...not quite.
Click through to read the full Observatory Hotel review
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by juliana
