Hotels

September felt like a long month — and I needed to escape London. The Spectator had just been sold — and while the transition from one editor to another brought excitement, it was also exhausting for everyone. Paris felt like the perfect retreat. And of course, the Eurostar is the fastest — and most enjoyable — way to get there from London. A friend of mine lives near the Gare du Nord, and as she was in London for a night, I borrowed her keys, jumped on the train and arrived in Paris as evening fell. Alone and hungry, I made my way to Les Deux Gares, a stylish hotel nestled between Gare du Nord and Gare de l’Est. Designed by Luke Edward Hall, whose aesthetic is unmistakably English, the restaurant inside is quintessentially French — and superb.

Summer in Rome. Expectation: breathe the soul of the classics, soak up the history, feel the romance. Reality: breathe in the AC, soak in a pool of sweat, feel ever so slightly unhinged. My plans to indulge in Italy’s time-honored tradition of la passeggiata — strolling around looking stylish, gelato in hand — were quickly nixed by the Cerberus heatwave. Dreams of meandering around perhaps the world’s most famous open-air museum gave way to lying recumbent with a handheld fan. Jumping from the relative cool of a sleeper-train carriage onto the platform at Termini station felt akin to opening an oven door and climbing in. Red alert warnings were issued as the mercury soared toward 119°F.

As the Olympic Games descend on the French capital this July, the contest that really matters for this sports-shy travel writer is where to stay. From historic heavyweights to new contenders, these Parisian properties stand head and shoulders above the rest. Best for wellness: Shangri-La Paris The cool marble interiors of Shangri-La’s Parisian outpost feel a world away from the tumult of the Champs-Élysées (in fact, it’s only a fifteen-minute walk). If the Grecian frescoes, silk wallpaper and sweeping, gilded staircase all seem distinctly regal that’s because the nineteenth-century building was originally the pied-à-terre of Prince Roland Bonaparte, Napoleon’s great-nephew.

It is 7:30 a.m. and already seventy degrees in Bowness-on-Windermere. A rare, early summer heatwave. My friend Ebele and I lower ourselves into a sunken outdoor hot tub in groggy disbelief. We appear to have woken up in Utopia. Llamas and alpacas frolic yards away as we sip coffees in silence. A butterfly lands on the decking. There’s no noise but for the bubbles, until a perfect breeze ruffles the fronds of the tree that’s dappling the sunlight. The grass could not be greener, skies cerulean. This is the definition of “bucolic,” I think. William Blake’s England, plus massage jets. His pastoral poems that plagued me in university start to make more sense (plenty of lambs here, too; the local “Herdies”).

When rulers are thrown out of their countries, they cannot expect all that much. Think of Napoleon, first cooling his heels in Elba, then ending his days in the damp-infested confines of Saint Helena. Which is why the former Edward VIII, later the Duke of Windsor, was comparatively fortunate that the Parisian spot in which he found himself living after his abdication in December 1936 was Le Meurice in Paris: then, as now, a hotel that offers not only glitteringly luxurious accommodation to its well-heeled denizens, but a tangible sense of history — its lavishly appointed suites and restaurants exude an atmosphere that’s simultaneously relaxing and conspiratorial. Turn an unexpected corner, and you half-expect to see the ghost of Wallis Simpson, barking orders at some hapless minion.

“If you wish to meet intellectual frauds in quantity,” V.S. Naipaul once said, “go to Paris.” After two years of pandemic-induced shutdowns and travel bans — some of them instituted, it seemed at times, with the sole purpose of harrying visitors from Britain — it was oddly satisfying, rather than irritating, to be assailed once again by the sciolistic outpourings of aspiring novelists. On mild spring evenings, the Left Bank echoed with the chatter of students and veterans of the creative writing mills of North America. Paris, finally, was emerging from the thickets of depression and terror occasioned by disease, ennui and patrols of gendarmes hunting for delinquents out for a walk.

You may have noticed the Connaught Hotel a little more since 2011, when ‘Silence’, the steamy fountain by Japanese ‘architect philosopher’ Tadao Ando, was installed outside the entrance. But actually the hotel doesn’t want to be noticed. It prides itself on guaranteeing famous guests their privacy. Eric Clapton added his own layer of protection by checking in as ‘Mr W.B. Albion’ (he’s a fan of the soccer club West Bromwich Albion). Alec Guinness valued its discretion, and was annoyed when Jack Nicholson’s stay during the filming of Batman attracted the paparazzi. The hotel in turn had its own issues with Jack and his entourage. As the star put it to a friend: ‘They have a shit fit every time we walk through the lobby with jeans on.