Hotels : Curated

Depth over breadth

Destinations

38 destinations

Golden sandstone cliffs and a sea stack above a small beach near Lagos, with the bay curving east behind

Algarve

Portugal · 7 hotels · 5 restaurants · 1 piece

A return to the Algarve of childhood summers, its beaches and the family's old favourite at Fonte da Pedra, with a hotel bed in Lagos instead of the family villa.

A pale sand beach curving along the west coast of Barbados, clear shallow water and trees down to the shore

Barbados

Barbados · 6 hotels · 5 restaurants

On the west coast of Barbados the sea is an impossible blue, and our way to look at it is over rum punch at a Holetown beach bar, all afternoon.

Grand Prismatic Spring in Yellowstone from the hillside above it, its blue pool ringed in orange, steam drifting over the boardwalk and pines in front

Bozeman and Yellowstone

United States · 4 hotels · 3 restaurants · 1 piece

One night in Bozeman, then Yellowstone from the west side, where the hot pools look mixed by hand and a June morning can open at 3°C with snow showers.

Punts on the Cam passing under a stone bridge on the Backs, willows and spring trees along the bank

Cambridge

United Kingdom · 4 hotels · 4 restaurants

Cambridge by someone who grew up there: a punt along the Backs from the Mill Pond, and a picnic and a summer swim in the Cam on Grantchester Meadows.

A blue bay with a white beach under mountains, seen from a dry, grassy hillside

Cape Town and the Winelands

South Africa · 12 hotels · 10 restaurants · 3 pieces

A week in Cape Town split down the middle: Kloof Street's bars for the first half, and for the second, wine estates over two mountain passes, more of them than the days will hold.

Cloud Gate in Millennium Park, reflecting the towers along Michigan Avenue on a grey February afternoon

Chicago

United States · 5 hotels · 6 restaurants

Mies van der Rohe's Chicago on foot in a bitter February wind, then the city's own hot dog, which comes with everything but ketchup.

A long, empty Atlantic beach at Comporta from the air at dusk, a line of surf on one side and dunes and pine scrub on the other

Comporta

Portugal · 4 hotels · 3 restaurants

Some sixty kilometres of Atlantic beach south of Lisbon, with rice still farmed behind it and storks over the flooded paddies at either end of the day.

A sandy beach at Dassia lined with parasols and sun loungers, calm water and wooded hills under a cloudy sky

Corfu

Greece · 5 hotels · 4 restaurants · 1 piece

Lawrence Durrell wrote much of Prospero's Cell in a fisherman's cottage on Kalami Bay, and its ground floor now serves meze with the whole bay in front of it.

The front of Denver's Union Station, with its Travel by Train sign and clock above the arched windows and café umbrellas below

Denver

United States · 5 hotels · 5 restaurants · 1 piece

A borrowed bike on the path beside Cherry Creek, under the trees and past walls of ivy, all the way into Denver's restored 1914 Union Station.

The Dubai skyline across the water from the Palm Jumeirah, with palms and a jetty in the foreground

Dubai

United Arab Emirates · 6 hotels · 7 restaurants · 1 piece

A week of late-January sun on the Palm, with the spice souks of Deira and the dunes around Al Qudra saved for next time.

Florence's terracotta rooftops from Giotto's bell tower, with the tower of the Palazzo Vecchio and the hills south of the Arno beyond

Florence

Italy · 8 hotels · 7 restaurants · 1 piece

Across the Arno the streets are as good and the crowd a fraction of the size, and from a hillside garden the Duomo is a thing to look at over the red roofs.

Small boats moored in clear turquoise water along the Riva in Hvar Town, the fortress on the hill above

Hvar

Croatia · 4 hotels · 4 restaurants

In midsummer the best of Hvar is offshore: a boat out of Hvar Town to swim as far as Brač and Korčula, tied up at Laganini's own dock for lunch and the cocktails after.

View from Cala Gracioneta Chiringito, down to the beach

Ibiza

Spain · 11 hotels · 8 restaurants · 2 pieces

Nights in an agroturismo among Ibiza's lemon groves, and days in a small boat off Formentera or in old-school hedonism on Playa Salinas.

Mylopotas bay on Ios from the hillside above, a curve of sand and turquoise water under bare brown hills, white houses and palms in the foreground

Ios

Greece · 4 hotels · 2 restaurants

Long lazy days on the sand at Mylopotas in September, when the party island's crowds have thinned and the sea is still near its warmest.

Turquoise water in a bay near Kalkan, a motor yacht moored under hills of scrub and pale rock

Kalkan

Türkiye · 4 hotels · 2 restaurants

A little hired boat out of Kalkan to the bays along Turkey's Turquoise Coast in September, when the water is exactly the colour the coast is named for.

Pastel houses of a lakeside village climbing a wooded slope above Lake Como, mountains folding away behind, seen from Il Sereno at water level

Lake Como

Italy · 5 hotels · 3 restaurants

Since the Plinys, the rich have been building villas on Lake Como, and in spring the azaleas at Villa Carlotta show what all that money went on.

Mountains rising straight out of Lake Garda at Riva, its northern tip, clouds on the summits and willows on the shore

Lake Garda

Italy · 9 hotels · 7 restaurants

At its northern tip Lake Garda squeezes between mountains that come straight down into the water, and the way into Riva del Garda is a stroll along the shore.

The red-tiled roofs of Alfama falling towards the Tagus, the dome of the National Pantheon on the skyline under a grey sky

Lisbon

Portugal · 3 hotels · 6 restaurants

Lisbon gets some of the most sunshine in Europe and has rained on all three of our visits, which a glass of wine and a small plate every few hours make very easy to forgive.

A rooftop terrace at La Sultana laid for lunch with green banquettes, looking over tiled rooftops to a minaret in the Kasbah

Marrakech

Morocco · 4 hotels · 4 restaurants

In the Red City the walls give nothing away: the riads were built facing inward, round their courtyards, and leave the lanes outside to the souks.

Miami Beach from above, rows of loungers on white sand and turquoise water beyond

Miami Beach

United States · 3 hotels · 5 restaurants

Under three hours' flight from a New York January, a day by an Art Deco pool and a day over the causeway in Little Havana, where the dominoes are serious and mostly for members.

The sandstone walls of Park Avenue in Arches National Park, lit red in the evening under a streaked sky

Moab

United States · 3 hotels · 3 restaurants · 1 piece

Red rock country that looks like another planet's, with Arches four miles up the road from Moab and the Colorado River running along the edge of town.

Iron-lace balconies hung with ferns on a street corner in the French Quarter of New Orleans

New Orleans

United States · 3 hotels · 5 restaurants

In October, with the worst of the heat over, the best use of a New Orleans afternoon is a drink in a small independent venue with live blues on.

The Midtown Manhattan skyline in silhouette at sunset across the East River from Brooklyn, the Empire State Building against red-lit clouds

New York

United States · 3 hotels · 14 restaurants

New York as three years of living there taught us to do it: downtown and Brooklyn, on foot and by bike, and Midtown left to whoever came for Times Square.

Palm trees against a pink dusk sky over Palm Springs, the mountains catching the last of the light behind

Palm Springs

United States · 3 hotels · 6 restaurants

Palm Springs in October, from the pool to the desert and back: a hike in Joshua Tree, and the Old West town Hollywood's cowboys built in 1946 to shoot their westerns in.

Pine-covered slopes and ski runs above Park City in summer, a road winding through the trees below

Park City

United States · 4 hotels · 4 restaurants

In June the ski runs above Park City are walked rather than skied, and dinner is in a Masonic hall of 1908 on the old silver camp's Main Street.

A curved sandy cove of turquoise water on the west coast of Paros, with rows of umbrellas along the beach and low white buildings above it

Paros

Greece · 3 hotels

An island built on white marble, where the Byzantine road out of Lefkes is paved with it and the fishing caiques in Naoussa tie up among the bars.

Prague Castle and St Vitus Cathedral above snow-covered roofs, across the Vltava in winter

Prague

Czechia · 4 hotels · 4 restaurants

Prague between Christmas and New Year, cold, with the markets on Old Town Square, best on foot: up the Castle Stairs and into back streets the Charles Bridge crowd leaves alone.

Clear turquoise shallows of the bay at Pefkos seen through tamarisk trees, the town strung along the shore beneath bare, rocky hills

Rhodes

Greece · 4 hotels · 3 restaurants

A cliff above a bay at Pefkos so calm it hardly seems to move, and ten minutes up the road Lindos, its cobbled streets left to the donkeys and the mopeds.

Umbrella pines over the Roman Forum from the Palatine, with the Arch of Titus, the Colosseum and the bell tower of Santa Francesca Romana beyond

Rome

Italy · 5 hotels · 5 restaurants · 1 piece

Rome on foot in January, when it is quieter, from a bed just off Piazza Navona, with the big sights booked ahead and the hours between them left for eating.

The San Francisco skyline from Dolores Park, palm trees in the foreground and the tall Salesforce Tower rising above downtown under a clear sky

San Francisco

United States · 2 hotels · 5 restaurants

San Francisco over a few January days, by bike across the Golden Gate Bridge and on foot up its hills, which left us wanting someone who knows it well to show us the rest.

Sunset over the Santorini caldera, islands dark on the water beyond white rooftop terraces and sun loungers

Santorini

Greece · 3 hotels · 3 restaurants

A single September night on Santorini, spent where we would spend it again: on the caldera rim, looking down into the drowned volcano.

Seville Cathedral and the Giralda from the square beside the Alcázar walls, with palms and horse carriages

Seville

Spain · 6 hotels · 5 restaurants

Sunshine on a Seville rooftop in January, then over the river to Triana, the less explored side of the city, for its market and its nightlife.

A herd of elephants with calves crossing a red dirt track at Welgevonden in the evening light

South African Game Reserves

South Africa · 9 hotels

Four of these six reserves are free of malaria, and on the Botswana border the night drive goes out after dinner for the brown hyena.

A wooden outrigger fishing boat drawn up on an empty sand beach at Mawella, with dense palms and jungle behind under a blue sky

Sri Lanka, south coast

Sri Lanka · 6 hotels · 2 restaurants

A week on Sri Lanka's south coast that ran on its dinners, from sambals and curries in a colonial house at Mawella to a lobster curry inside the walls of Galle Fort.

White villas and palms running down to the Atlantic on the south-west coast of Tenerife, with La Gomera on the horizon

Tenerife

Spain · 3 hotels · 6 restaurants · 1 piece

Off Teide by paraglider and down to a coast where the restaurants have become as good a reason to come as the hotels.

Daybeds and palapa umbrellas on the white sand of Tulum beach under a clear blue sky, palms along the shore and the Caribbean turquoise beyond

Tulum

Mexico · 3 hotels · 5 restaurants

Tulum's walled Maya port still stands on its cliff above the Caribbean, and below it is a beach that only people with a ticket to the ruins can use.

A gondolier rowing past the dome of Santa Maria della Salute at the mouth of the Grand Canal

Venice

Italy · 4 hotels · 4 restaurants · 1 piece

Drink on the Grand Canal, on the Gritti's terrace opposite the Salute; if the food matters, eat well away from it.

Clear turquoise water over pebbles in a small rocky cove near Agios Nikolaos, with a row of motorboats moored beside a timber jetty and sunloungers, seen through tamarisk branches

Zakynthos

Greece · 5 hotels · 5 restaurants

A late-summer fortnight at the empty northern tip of Zakynthos, wading out from pebble coves into turquoise water, with the resorts left further down the coast.