The Green Travel Award nominations at the UK Times often include some of those rustic, roughin' it, super-green types of eco-hotels where you can't flush the toilet or need rubber boots to get to the dining hall.
But recently they suggested something much more civilized: Budock Vean Hotel, a country hotel near the Helford River in Cornwall, southwest England.
The Budock Vean (which has a kind of a subtitle: "The Hotel on the River") is a 59-room four-star hotel, complete with a 9-hole golf course, swimming pool, sauna, spa and tennis courts, but it's also good at being green. For example, it is careful to support local industry: 80% of the hotel's expenditure goes in to the local community.
You don't need to pony up the dough for a room at the expensive Inn at Spanish Bay in Pebble Beach, Calif. to enjoy the beautiful coastal view and a sunset serenade from a Scottish bag piper at dusk.
We hit up the hotel's Lobby Lounge on Saturday night where vacationing golfers and their families gathered around one of the four fire pits on the back terrace. Here you can take in the killer views of the Pacific Ocean and the second hole of the Links at Spanish Bay.
The Cipriani Ocean Resort and Club Residences in South Beach, the snooty-chic 209-room beach resort and private condo development, seems to still be on track for completion in mid-2009.
The 24-month construction project (which involves the restoration and revamp of the old Saxony property) will feature crazy Miami city and ocean views and some pretty baller amenities when all is said and done:
600 feet of pristine beachfront, a spa, fitness center, outdoor bar and grill, beach cabana food and beverage service, three swimming pools, a signature world famous Cipriani restaurant and as well as a grand ballroom.
We can't imagine room rates will be easily stomached by those of us whose idea of a splurge is buying a shirt from Banana Republic instead of Forever21, but the website already has some fairly stunning photos of the resort that make us long to be the rich WASP-y type or the overprivileged hyper-trendy type. We'd bet Blair Waldorf would book a room here in a red hot second.
Check out a rendering of the exterior after the jump.
The newest edition to the Orchid Hotels and Resorts family is Hidden Pond in Kennebunkport, Maine. Normally, we don't go further north than Manhattan when we travel the Eastern Seaboard but we are actually contemplating a stay here at Hidden Pond when it opens in July.
The hotel is actually made up of 14 cottages complete with full kitchens, king beds, flat-screen TVs, large screen porch, gas fireplaces and even an outdoor shower. (There's an indoor bath too.)
Some more on the cottages:
Natural fabrics, an inviting screened-in porch, a gas fireplace set in river stone, clever little kitchens and floor to ceiling windows that allow nature inside ... enjoy all of this by day and then retreat to the sanctuary of your bedroom where you'll find Frette bed linens, plush down-filled duvets and the most comfortable bed you've ever had the pleasure to encounter.
We live for the weekends, especially the three-day Memorial Day kind. After the longest winter ever here in the Northeast, we are SO ready to pack up the SPF and start working 9-to-5 on a tan. And like many of us city dwellers, we plan to swap the drab concrete for warm sand, drop our "Rs" and kick it wicked for a getaway in Cape Cod.
Luckily we got Travelzoo-wise to a Memorial Day weekend deal at the Radisson Hotel Hyannis for only $99 per night - which is up to $110 off regular room rates. And it's Hyannis, the very heart of Cape Cod. You know, Kennedy-clan heaven and all that.
Yet true WASPs beware: there are purple leather couches in the lobby here. Perhaps you should make nice with Muffy and Buffy again.
Nothing screams high-society Brit like teatime in a lavish garden. Throw in an elaborate country house hotel, complete with a croquet lawn and four acres of gardens, and you've got yourself an anglophile's paradise.
Such is the Summer Lodge Country House Hotel in the town of Evershot, in Dorset's countryside, whose non-English specific features also include a spa and heated indoor pool.
Through November, the hotel is offering a package centered on Dorset's various and famed gardens, which includes two nights' accommodations in a Superior Room (with garden views), full English breakfast, nightly three-course dinner, a property tour, and visits to Montacute House and Tintinhull Gardens, both manor houses surrounded by--yup--gardens.
Plus, you'll get to experience Summer Lodge's own "Thoughtful Touches," like fresh milk, fruit and home-baked short bread in your room each day, candles at turndown and a departure bag of fresh fruit and water.
All this, for about $1,840. Oh, come on now. You didn't expect to play like Prince Charles without having to pay, did you?
Of course, Lloyd Christmas described this city best when he decided to follow his lady love across the country in Dumb And Dumber:
A place where the beer flows like wine. Where beautiful women instinctively flock like the salmon of Capistrano. I'm talking about a little place called Aspen.
In the film, Lauren Holly, as the endearingly indifferent object of Lloyd's affection, embodies the WASP persona. When visiting Aspen, her character, Mary Swanson, could very well have stayed at The Little Nell. For the past three years, The Little Nell has made Conde Nast Traveler's Gold List. It's self-described "understated elegance" sounds like the kind of quiet haughtiness exclusive to Old Money folks.
And starting at $470 a night, you'll need to have kept your cash in Escro for quite some time to afford to stay. The simply-named The Bar is known for its martinis, naturally.
The Breakers Hotel in Palm Beach, Fla. is patroned by the kind of people who wear their family crests on their loafers. And yes -- Stubbs & Wootton, a prep-serving boutique with a location a few minutes away on 4 Via Parigi, actually sells these. This type of foolishness deserves our chagrin and broad stereotyping.
The 140-acre, five-star hotel gives WASPs what they most appreciate -- a history. In South Florida, where everything is brand new and kinda makeshift, The Breakers has been around since 1896. Well, technically, that building burnt to the ground and had to be rebuilt in the 20s, but let's just say the hotel has been around to house rich people in big, floppy hats since they had a luxury railcar to take them to the tip of the peninsula.
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by amandak
