ultratravelYOUR GUIDE TO HEAVEN ON EARTH SUMMER 2012

The Daily Telegraph

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© Telegraph Media Group Limited 2012. Published by TELEGRAPH MEDIA GROUP, 111 Buckingham Palace Road, London SW1W 0DT, and printed by Polestar UK Limited.

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24

The right trousers Why Palm Springs

is fashionable again (page 28)

Features28 Life in the Movie Colony In its heyday, Palm Springs was

the desert playground of Hollywood stars from Frank Sinatra to

Marilyn Monroe. Now, says Douglas Rogers, its cool retro style

is inspiring a new generation of designers and culture-seekers

36 The last frontier On an opulent schooner, Lisa Grainger

explores the untouched Raja Ampat archipelago of Indonesia

44 Islands of the gods Despite current woes, the Greek

islands have retained their grandeur. Robin Gauldie charts

hidden corners and hot properties, from Chios to Santorini

53 The Ultratravel 100 In our annual awards, we name the

100 finest things in luxury travel, nominated by our readers

60 Star signs The guestbook at the Hôtel du Cap-Eden-Roc, in

Antibes, reads like a Who’s Who of A-listers. Peter Hughes gets

a rare glimpse of the world’s most impressive autograph book

Regulars11 Editor’s letter Escape is the word on everyone’s lips this

summer – but where? Our writers provide inspiration

13 The next big thing News, trends, events and phenomena

from around the world, compiled by Adriaane Pielou

17 Ultratravel accessories In this Olympic year, it’s all

about gold, silver and bronze

22 Victoria’s secrets Culture, seen differently, is what the

smart traveller is seeking. Victoria Mather shares her tips

24 Countdown to… Rio de Janeiro. In an insider’s guide,

Chris Moss finds much to celebrate in the next Olympic city

27 Shop local In Stockholm, Lisa Grainger takes advice from

residents on where to find the best contemporary furniture

69 Ultra intelligence The £30 million superyacht; rhubarb on

the rise; the most palatial suite in Marrakech; and what

makes Andrew Purvis furious about high-end restaurants

74 Travelling life Buzz Aldrin talks about his Earthbound

adventures, from diving in Bonaire to exploring the Arctic

CONTENTS

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Buzz Aldrin

Now 82, the former Apollo

11 astronaut and moonwalker

still likes flying up front.

“I don’t have to sit upright when

it’s time to sleep,” he says,

“and I always introduce

myself to the pilot and

co-pilot. They kind of

like having me

on board”

Photographer: Chris CaldicottLisa Grainger

Ultratravel’s deputy editor is

no stranger to luxury – or to

diving – and cruising the

Raja Ampat archipelago on

Tiger Blue offered a lot of

both. The highlight? “Diving

with manta rays. It made

travelling to the other side

of the world worthwhile”

Caroline Shearing

Fascinated by space since

childhood, the Telegraph’s

travel reporter always takes

her telescope on holiday.

Interviewing Buzz Aldrin was

a mission fulfilled. “Along

with Roger Penrose, Sir

Patrick Moore and Stephen

Hawking, he was on my list”

Peter Hughes

The Telegraph contributor

has won awards for stories

about tiger tourism and the

world’s largest cruise ship.

A master at exclusives, he

was given a rare glimpse

of the guestbook at the

Hôtel du Cap-Eden-Roc,

signed by a panoply of stars

Douglas Rogers

The journalist and author,

based in New York, has

visited more than 50

countries, from Armenia to

Zambia. For this issue, we

sent him closer to home:

Palm Springs, California, to

explore the legacy of Frank

Sinatra and the Rat Pack

EDITOR’S LETTER

A GALAXY OF STARS

CONTRIBUTORS

ESCAPE. After what has surely been Britain’s wettest drought on

record, and with London set to be swamped again by flag-waving

crowds clamouring for pomp and circumstance (the Diamond

Jubilee) and sporting endeavour (the Olympics), escape is

the word on everybody’s lips this summer – but to where?

Who better to provide perspective on what Earth has to offer

than Buzz Aldrin? Among his travelling highlights (page 74) are

luxuriating in the refinement of Claridge’s, sailing to the North

Pole on a Russian ice-breaker and skiing in Idaho. However, it is his favourite pursuit, scuba

diving, that brings Aldrin closest to the feeling of weightlessness experienced in space.

With this in mind, Lisa Grainger heads for Indonesia (page 36) to board a luxury schooner

and dive among the dazzling marine life and corals of the Raja Ampat archipelago, islands

that have changed little since Sir Francis Drake dropped anchor there 450 years ago.

For a glimpse of Hollywood life, Peter Hughes (page 60) stays at the legendary Hôtel du

Cap-Eden-Roc, on the Côte D’Azur, and unveils the secrets of its star-studded guestbook.

Douglas Rogers finds that the legacy of Sinatra and Monroe lives on in Palm Springs (page

28), the desert enclave 100 miles from Los Angeles which is undergoing a style revival.

We also launch a new section, The Next Big Thing (page 13), Adriaane Pielou’s round-up

of trends, ideas, objects, phenomena and newsworthy events this summer – none bigger

than the transit of Venus, best viewed from Hawaii or French Polynesia. Closer to home,

Robin Gauldie charts a realm of sparkling Mediterranean views, grand properties and

private hideaways, in his Pleasure-seeker’s Guide to the Greek Islands (page 44).

If further guidance is needed, look no further than the Ultratravel 100 (page 53), our

definitive list of the 100 finest things in luxury travel, chosen by readers and celebrated in

our annual awards. For these worthy winners, as Ol’ Blue Eyes said, it was a very good year.

ultratravel

Editor Charles Starmer-Smith Creative director Johnny Morris Managing editor Andrew Purvis

Deputy editor Lisa Grainger Sub-editor Yolanda Carslaw Photography editor Joe Plimmer Contributing editor Adriaane Pielou Intern George Selwyn-Brace

Executive publisher for Ultratravel Limited Nick Perry Publisher Toby Moore

Advertising inquiries 07768 106322 (Nick Perry) 020 7931 3239 (Fran Burns)

Ultratravel, 111 Buckingham Palace Road, London SW1W 0DT

Editor

AD

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Shot at Wayag Island, Indonesia

Stairway to heaven

Inside the Hôtel du

Cap-Eden-Roc (page 60)

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Upcoming events, trends, ideas, phenomena and large planetary objects from the world of luxury travel

• VENUS IN TRANSIT

Few astronomical events are bigger than the transit of Venus, the rare phenomenon

(Venus crossing the sun) that happens in pairs, eight years apart, either every 105 or

121 years. The next transit will take place on June 5 and 6 this year, and among the

best places to watch it will be the Pacific Ocean and Polynesia, where Captain

James Cook witnessed the event in 1769. The next occurrence after this one will be

in December 2117, meaning it will not be seen again by many people alive today.

Explorers Astronomy Tours (0845 508 6654, astronomytours.co.uk) is offering

10 nights in Hawaii, home of some of the world’s best observatories, for £3,699

including flights. Five nights at the St Regis Bora Bora, on the island of that name

in French Polynesia, costs £3,510 (01244 897555, elegantresorts.co.uk) with flights.

Astronomer’s impression

The trajectory that Venus (black dots)

will follow as it crosses the sun in June.

Below: observatories at Hawaii’s

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theNEXT BIGTHINGCOMPILED BY ADRIAANE PIELOU

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• A MAN CALLED HAN

Nearly 100 years since the Little

Mermaid sculpture took her place

in Copenhagen harbour, she is

to have a male counterpart

25 miles away. Han, who

will be unveiled next

month, will sit on a “rock”

of polished stainless steel

near Kronborg Castle, the

setting for Shakespeare’s

Hamlet. The sculpture is by

Michael Elmgreen and Ingar Dragset,

who also brought the “rocking-horse boy” to the fourth

plinth in Trafalgar Square in February. Examine Han’s face

and you may see him move – a hydraulic mechanism

makes him blink once an hour. In Copenhagen, stay

at the Arne Jacobsen-designed Radisson Blu Royal

(00 45 3342 6000, radisson.com), from £320.

• IN-FLIGHT COCKTAIL BAR

The longest cocktail bar in the sky has just been

launched by Virgin Atlantic. Measuring 8ft, the Club

Class bar accommodates eight and has moody lighting

and curtains adorned with more than 1,000 Swarovski

crystals. The bad news: there is only one, so far. The

good news: the post-cocktail beds are the biggest in

any business class: 7ft 3in. virginatlanticplaneview.com

• MCLAREN MP4-12C HIRE CAR

It costs an eyewatering £212,000 to buy, but, thanks to

Hertz, McLaren’s supercar is no longer a toy for

just the super-rich. This speed machine – which

does 0-60mph in 2.8 seconds and is capable of

200mph plus – is now available to rent, for

£1,248 for 24 hours, through Hertz Supercars.

Hertz customers can also get behind the wheel of

a Ferrari 458 Italia, Lamborghini LP560-4 Bicolore, Aston Martin

Rapide or Rolls-Royce Phantom. Customers must be over 25, with no

more than six points on their licence (01920 461703, hertzsupercars.com).

theNEXTBIGTHING

• WALES COAST PATH

The 870-mile Wales Coast Path is now

complete, making Wales the first country

in the world to have a continuous path

along the entire length of its coast. Five

years in the building, at a cost of £14

million, the path takes in Cardiff, the Victorian seaside

towns of Swansea and Llandudno, and some of the most

soul-stirring scenery in Britain, from the immense beaches

of the Gower Peninsula to the salt marshes of Cardigan

Bay. Near the Coast Path in Pembrokeshire (pictured), the

13th-century Roch Castle, newly opened to guests, offers

three nights’ b&b for up to 12 people from £2,400

(07896 330869, retreatsgroup.com).

The 147ft expedition yacht

Big Fish is one of a new

generation of vessels

catering for adventurers.

Powered by twin

Caterpillar engines, with

a top speed of 16 knots

and a range of 10,000

nautical miles, it is capable

of circumnavigating the

globe and travelling to the

Antarctic. Toys on board

include kayaks, Laser

sailing dinghies, jet skis

and a 28ft speedboat with

a 200-mile range, ideal for

accessing dive sites or

simply exploring. Up to

10 guests can join the 10

crew – and they can even

pack high heels, thanks

to “stiletto-friendly”,

epoxy-infused granite

decks. Big Fish is available

to charter – but this

summer could be the last

opportunity, as she is

also for sale, priced at

£18.2 million. Rates start at

$245,000 (about £160,000)

for a week (020 7584

1801, ycoyacht.com).

*• BAR WITH THE BEST LONDON VIEW

This summer will see the opening of an extravagant rooftop

bar and club atop ME London, the first UK hotel for the

Spanish group ME By Meliá. The 157-room “urban resort”

sits on the junction of the Strand and Aldwych, occupying

Marconi House, which has had a makeover by Sir Norman

Foster. The promise: not just the best views of any hotel

bar in London, but clever cocktails and curated music.

Presiding over the roof terrace will be an “aura experience

manager” with an “everything is possible” ethos of service.

Rooms from £408 (0808 234 1953, melondonuk.com)

• BIG FISH

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1 Gold-plated Beats by Dr Dre Pro headphones £998 (crystalrocked.com)

2 Sunray tube necklace by Mawi £365 (0845 224 2617, quintessentiallygifts.com)

3 Leather wheeled case £1,326 (020 7499 7082, couturelab.com)

4 Chain-mail sandals by Brian Atwood £520 (0800 044 5700, net-a-porter.com)

5 Knuckle box clutch £1,150 (020 7355 0088, alexandermcqueen.co.uk)

6 Leather-covered journal £39 (0845 052 6900, aspinaloflondon.com)

7 Chronomat 44 watch in rose gold £38,530 (020 7637 5167, breitling.com)

8 Embroidered fedora by Eugenia Kim £255 (Net-a-Porter, as before)

9 Gold-plated bracelet by Alice Menter £195 (020 7942 2696, vandashop.com)

LCKI8KI8M<CACCESSORIESGold, silver, bronze: medals are not the only glittering

prizes this Olympic summer, says Adriaane Pielou

Gold standard

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1 Ingegnere Due eight-speed bike £1,393 (00 49 30 3267 8201, bellaciao.de/en)

2 Mobee Magic Bar keyboard-charging dock £49.99 (0800 044 5010, firebox.com)

shown with Apple wireless keyboard £59 (08456 049 049, johnlewis.com)

3 Woven leather Mini Huxley tote £995 (020 7501 0177, anyahindmarch.com)

4 Sterling silver 8GB memory stick £97.50 (01227 764755, silverpen.co.uk)

5 Silver-plated Utah cuff by Philippe Audibert £560 (0800 044 5700, net-a-porter.com)

6 Olympic Pocket Watch 1932 chronograph £64,700 (020 7491 8113, omegawatches.com)

7 Diamond Tears Edge headphones by Monster £199 (020 7730 1234, harrods.com)

8 Sterling silver scent atomiser £325 (020 7493 8385, williamandson.com)

9 Zero-emission Agility Saietta R electric sports bike £13,750 (Firebox, as before)

Silver service

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1 Straw trilby by Etro £100 (0800 044 5705, mrporter.com)

2 Lizard and leather sandals by Reed Krakoff £885 (0800 044 5700, net-a-porter.com)

3 Olympus Pen Mini E-PM1 with 14-42mm lens £339 (0117 914 0089, bristolcameras.co.uk)

4 Salsa Air Ultralight case by Rimowa £355 (0800 123 400, selfridges.com)

5 Sunleya SPF15 age-minimising sunscreen by Sisley £134 (Selfridges, as before)

6 Vintage Hermès scarf £275 (0845 224 2617, quintessentiallygifts.com)

7 Panerai Luminor Submersible 1950 “Bronzo” watch £6,500 (panerai.com)

8 Square-frame acetate sunglasses by Linda Farrow Luxe £320 (Mr Porter, as before)

9 Leather laptop bag by Travelteq £410 (Quintessentially Gifts, as before)

Bronze finish

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Victoria’s secrets

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expected him to have hung out at the Brody

House in Budapest, which, with its art, music

and DJs, is like a members’ club with rooms –

a fun, young alternative to the stately glory of

the Four Seasons Gresham Palace. And

Budapest is humming, its culture fortified by

the new wines now being produced in the

vineyards that died during communism.

Culture is not all about rosy Renaissance

madonnas with fat baby Christs. Take the

House of Terror at Andrassy ut 60, a museum

and memorial to the fascist and communist

atrocities of the 20th century – events so

horribly close in time that its torture chambers

are still shivery-cold. The place is as

relevant to us as the shattering

Kigali Genocide Memorial

Centre in Rwanda: history, but

presented in the most

non-traditional of ways.

It is important to see this

culture with the right people,

which is why the Tate and

The Ultimate Travel Company

have launched Tate Travels

(tatetravels.co.uk). On one of its cultural

extravaganzas, art historian Harriet Landseer

will lead a trip to Mexico, embracing Frida

Kahlo, Diego Rivera and the artists’ colony

of Cuernavaca. On another, architectural

historian Bill Hinchliff and James Rondeau,

curator of the Art Institute of Chicago, will take

groups to the Windy City to learn about Roy

Lichtenstein and Frank Lloyd Wright.

In October, James Jayasundera

(ampersandtravel.com) and Emily FitzRoy

(bellinitravel.com) will together lead

a programme taking in India and Italy. It will

be maharajas and mozzarella, viceroys and

Vesuvius, with Jayasundera opening palace

doors in India and FitzRoy holding the key

to Italy. They only do private guides, private

gardens, private houses, private access, so

in India guests will stay with Prince Richard

Holkar at Ahilya Fort and at the Nizam of

Hyderabad’s restored Taj Falaknuma Palace.

In Italy, they will spend their nights at the

Gettys’ old house, Posta Vecchia, and at the

Sersales’ Le Sirenuse in Positano. FitzRoy’s

grandfather, the Duke of Grafton, always

travelled with the Queen Mother and an

industrial-sized bottle of Dubonnet, so she has

the pedigree to escort today’s Grand Tourists.

In July, John Hall (johnhallitalianjourneys.

com), whose pre-university courses in Venice

have lifted frightfully nice boys and girls from

the best families out of total ignorance,

is now allowing parents on to his

tours as mature students. In July,

he is leading a trip to the Marches,

a secret corner of Italy awash with

Raphaels and good restaurants.

In Abu Dhabi recently I stood

in the Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque

and marvelled. It is beautiful, gentle

and spiritual, its hand-crafted white

marble glowing with simple reverence

(apart from Swarovski crystal chandeliers, as

ostentatious as anything worn at the Oscars).

So much of our architecture was inspired

by religion but now, in our secular society,

shops (Louis Vuitton in Tokyo), airports

(Norman Foster’s in Beijing) and hotels

(IM Pei’s Four Seasons New York) are our

temples – to Mammon. Abu Dhabi is taking

a more enlightened approach. It aims to be the

cultural hub of the Middle East, with Jean

Nouvel designing a Louvre there, Frank

Gehry a Guggenheim, and the British

Museum collaborating on a National Museum

designed by Norman Foster. If savvy Abu

Dhabi sees culture as the future, it must be.

/he old culture is the new culture.

Travellers want to see Paris,

Prague and the Pyramids, just as

they have always done, but to see

them in a new way. The smart

thing to say is that the Mayan

pyramids of Guatemala knock

spots off the Egyptian models. Prague? Lovely,

of course, but rather old news unless you have

stayed at Rocco Forte’s Augustine Hotel, once a

13th-century monastery.

More than anything, what the time-poor

(and, now, just the plain poor) want is An

Experience. “I do not travel unless I am going

to see something I have not seen already and

so extraordinary that it makes the struggle

through the airport worth it,” says Carol

Thatcher. Having been on the inside track at

both the White House and the Kremlin,

she has done quite a bit of extraordinary.

The experience has to be authentic. Extreme

adventure (such as flossing the teeth of white

sharks in South Africa) is essentially contrived.

As Tom Barber of Original Travel puts it:

“The future is culture, because culture and

authenticity go naturally together.”

Barber’s idea of culture is not culture as

we know it. He espouses Eastern Europe, for

instance, working with Count Tibor Kalnoky,

who has helped the Prince of Wales preserve

old Transylvanian villages where the horse and

cart remain de rigueur (HRH’s house in Viscri

can be used as a guest house when he is not

there). Even Prince Harry, not a natural culture

vulture, spent Easter with the 45-year-old

count in his 16th-century manor house. It feels

almost medieval, a place where one can walk

and ride, or indulge in a spot of bear-watching

to soothe one’s soul in the bear market.

Prince Harry’s visit represents a significant

tipping point from Boujis to bucolic. I’d have

Culture vultures want An Experience, says Victoria Mather, from living in a medieval hamlet to shacking up with royalty

In Transylvania, the horse and cart remain de rigueur and one can walk, ride or do a spot of bear-watching

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5REASONS TO GO

The epitome of glamour in the 1930s and 40s and

rock ‘n’ roll sexiness in the 1960s and 70s, Rio is back in

vogue. Preparations for the 2014 World Cup and 2016

Olympic Games mean revamps of everything from stadia

to favelas, as well as protection orders on the colonial

architecture. If São Paulo is Brazil’s economic

powerhouse, Rio remains its cultural and hedonistic

hub, with new arts spaces such as Movimento and

the Bhering Factory and the renovation of the

Theatro Municipal

complementing

landmarks such as

the Niterói

Contemporary Art

Museum (left).

The verities endure:

Rio’s dreamy beaches, set against granite and quartz

morros, and a proper wilderness just

a 15-minute taxi ride away at Tijuca Forest Park.

The cariocas, Rio’s residents, enjoy a frenetic

social life and exude a natural grace, whether

heading out for cocktails at the latest new bar in

Santa Teresa or crossing the coast road in an otiose

swimsuit. Once London 2012 is over, the focus will shift

to Rio – now is the time to go to beat the crowds.

COUNTDOWNTORio de Janeiro

4HOTELS

The Hotel Santa Teresa (00 55 21 3380 0200,

santa-teresa-hotel.com) opened three years ago in its namesake

district – a newly fashionable area of tree-lined, cobbled streets. It’s

away from the beachside bustle, with a pool, lovely gardens

and furniture by Sergio Rodrigues, Rio’s most daring designer.

Marina All Suites (00 55 21 2172 1100, marinaallsuites.com.br)

on Avenida Delfim Moreira, in Leblon, is expensively funky;

its new Club Floor has spectacular, cleanly designed

rooms with ocean views and its Bar d’Hotel is one of

Rio’s hippest. Fasano (00 55 21 3202 4000, fasano.

com.br) has become one of South America’s most

stylish hotel groups and its Ipanema hotel (right),

which wears the Starck signature well, has suites

from which you can see the Atlantic from your bed.

Staying at La Suite (00 55 21 2484 1962, lasuiterio.

com), on a cliff in Joatinga, is akin to being at

a friend’s place, though that friend is a millionaire

modernist who loves pop art and Baccarat chandeliers.

1ESSENTIAL READ

There are travel guides and

websites galore – Time Out has

now launched in Rio – but to

discover the literary, pre-

Copacabana city, read the

witty satire, Epitaph of a Small

Winner, by Machado de Assis,

who was born in Rio in 1839

and spent all his life there.

2NIGHTLIFE SPOTS

If you can’t make it for carnival, don’t despair. Rio is always up for

a dance. Studio RJ (00 55 21 2523 1204, studiorj.org), which opened in

October, is Ipanema’s hot new live venue, hosting performances of carnival

music by acts inspired by blocos (street bands). Rio Scenarium (00 55 21 3147

9000, rioscenarium.com.br), in the lively Lapa district, is an old fave where the

choro, forró, samba and everything in between are danced, on three

storeys of dancefloors in a space crammed with old furniture.

‘Everything about Rio makes you want to dance. I’m just so thankful that my brother isn’t here because he might actually do it… and that would not be cool’ Prince Harry

VISITORS’ BOOK

The Copacabana Palace has hosted everyone from Madonna, the RollingStones and NelsonMandela to the actors Robert Pattinsonand Javier Bardem.Ipanema’s Fasano hotel attracts a party crowd, such as the singers Rihannaand Beyoncé, the actors John Travolta and Ashton Kutcher and the heiress and show-jumper Athina Onassis

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WHAT RIO DE JANEIRO WAS BRAZIL’S CAPITAL UNTIL 1960 AND IS ITS SECOND MOST POPULATED CITY (6.3 MILLION), AFTER SÃO PAULO WHEN JANUARY TO MAY ARE BRIGHT AND DRY AND THE SPRING MONTHS

OF SEPTEMBER AND OCTOBER ARE WONDERFUL. CARNIVAL TAKES PLACE DURING LENT – GREAT IF YOU LOVE CROWDS, BUT HORRENDOUS IF YOU DON’T FLY DIRECT FROM LONDON WITH BA OR TAM IN 11 HOURS

NEED TO KNOW

3RESTAURANTS

Rio is perhaps best known for informal pé sujo

(dirty foot) dining, sweet and salty comfort food and

early drinking – a 10am bottle of Brahma beer is

completely cool – in laid-back pubs called botecos.

But it’s in the high-end restaurant scene that the city

has seen its most obvious renaissance. La Fidúcia

(00 55 21 2295 7474, lafiducia.com.br) has been

praised by cariocas for rebooting the classily

romantic vibe along Copacabana’s Rua Duvivier, and

the contemporary Italian menu – with Brazilian

classics such as feijoada available at weekends – is

one of the best in town. Le Pré Catelan (below) at

the Rio Sofitel (00 55 21 2525 1206, leprecatelan.com.

br) is the best hotel restaurant, where Roland Villard

oversees a trilogy-themed starter menu that features

sensational seafood entrées such as lobster ravioli

and bisque, and langoustine tartar with tomato and

mango, and main courses that range from Amazonian

tambaqui fish to Angus ox chops. A classic on

Avenida Atlântica is Restaurante La Fiorentina

(00 55 21 2543 8395, lafiorentina.com.br), which is

popular with carioca celebrities and artists and ideal

for a pasta or pizza evening with ice-cold beers. On

the walls, black-and-white photographs of past

diners, including Rita Hayworth, Rudolph Nureyev

and Brigitte Bardot, evoke the charm of old Rio.

Relish the renaissance of Brazil’s stylish cultural capital before World Cup and Olympic fever sets in, says Chris Moss

Secluded beaches of golden sand, Thai massages at a roofop spa, sipping champagne in a rose petal bath, and a meal on a private beach.

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For clean, functional

design and modern

furniture, the Swedish

capital is the place to

head – but how do you

find the best? In the first

of a series, Lisa Grainger

takes advice from

experts who live there

Despite having trained in the 1930s, when functionality

ruled in Scandinavia, the Swedish designer Carl

Malmsten believed furniture should be pleasing to

the eye as well as a pleasure to use. His aesthetics

seem to have been passed on to his grandson, Jerk, who has

not only taken on the task of continuing his grandfather’s

furniture-making business, Malmsten, but of modernising it.

Accompanying Jerk around his shop, Malmstenbutiken, on

Strandvägen, one of Stockholm’s smartest streets, what stands

out most is just how modern even 100-year-old chairs can

look. But that is why one comes to the Swedish capital to

shop: Scandinavian design is not just clean, but timeless.

“The things we sell have to be beautiful, but also good-quality

and useful for generations to come,” says Jerk. Examples include

his grandfather’s rockers, now available in a matt-grey finish;

canvas-and-leather Sandqvist bags made by two local brothers;

cleverly designed espresso cups by the Gustavsberg collective;

and lampshades by Carl’s great-granddaughter, Vanja.

The city is dotted with artisanal stores that stock retro pieces

by Scandinavia’s leading designers (Yngve Ekström,

Hans Wegner, Eero Aarnio, Bruno Mathsson, Alvar

Aalto) but how does a visitor know where to find

them? Guided by two local experts – Charlotta

Carlsen of Smart City Shopping and Nanette

Fickendey of Luxury Beyond – I home in on

Ostermalm, for its antique stores, and

Södermalm, a hipper part of the city.

First, we visit Svenskt Tenn: a beguiling mix

of Design Museum-meets-Conran Shop –

filled with the designs of Josef Frank, and the

vision of his mentor, Estrid Ericson. She was

an aesthete, he a Jewish-Austrian refugee

whom she helped become one of Sweden’s

most celebrated furniture-makers and fabric

designers. Three-quarters of their two-storey

emporium is occupied by his designs

(including bright, distinctive fabrics), while

the rest showcases an evolving collection by

other Swedish designers. Since Ericson

died, in 1981, the shop has been run by

a foundation that maintains her vision while

promoting new talent (hence its central role

at the annual Stockholm Furniture Fair).

In nearby Ostermalm, we nip in and out

of boutiques. At Oscar & Clothilde, we find

theatrical rooms of new homewares inspired

by traditional lines. At Gamla Lampor, on Almlöfsgatan, we

explore a warehouse of retro lighting, from giant film-set rigs to

dainty chandeliers. Modernity features such clean-lined classics

as a 1928 lamp by Poul Henningsen and a covetable 1960s Hans

Wegner desk. At vast Jacksons, I fall in love with 20 different

chairs. Tiny Sjöström Antik has a Borge Mogensen leather sofa

perfect for my living room. At Rehn’s Antiques, I’m crazy about

a 1950s portrait, but can’t afford the five-figure sum which the

charismatic owner, Tony Andersson, says is “very inexpensive”.

Although the selection of pieces is wide, prices are no cheaper

than in London – and you still have to ship your shopping home.

Try your luck at the auction house Bukowskis (bukowskis.com),

and they will do the shipping for you – or you can scour junkier

shops for smaller pieces to cart back in a suitcase. Try A La Carte

Antik – in which I find beautiful porcelain-topped bottles

(Kr30/£3) – or the Sunday flea market, by the concert hall, where

I buy eight fine white china tureens (Kr50) and an oil painting

(Kr1,200); get there by 10am to snaffle the best pieces.

Having scoured smart, cobbled Ostermalm (also nipping into

contemporary shops such as Nordiska Galleriet,

Asplund and Stockholm Modern), the next day

I take in the more bohemian Södermalm. Along

cafe-lined streets where youngsters are enjoying

brunch lie the city’s grungier shops, stocking

such treasures as records, vintage clothes,

cool 1950s teak pieces at Nordlings Antik,

and 1950s Arne Jacobsen chairs at Södra

Skattkammaren. Nothing groundbreaking,

but fun. The best find is the city’s hippest

food store, Urban Deli, which sells liquorice

ice cream. It’s spirit-lifting, particularly when

enjoyed, with blistered feet up, on a boat trip

around the city’s 14 islands, watching the

handsome medieval city – and its rather

overwhelming rooms of furniture – drift by.

After all that 20th-century design, I relish

the city’s rich National Gallery, hung with

gilt-framed pictures of silk and opulence;

Skansen, the open-air island museum

showcasing Swedish architecture; and the

Vasa Museum, home to the oldest surviving

ship, sunk in 1628, salvaged in 1961, and now

restored. On a trip in search of wooden

classics, there can be no object as enthralling.

This is one Swedish treasure that is definitely

not for sale – nor shippable to Britain.

SHOPLOCAL

Strandvägen 5 (00 46 8 670 1600,

svenskttenn.se). Opened in 1924 by the

visionary aesthete Estrid Ericson as

a showcase for leading design from around

the world, Svenskt Tenn is now devoted to

furniture and fabric by Josef Frank, and

to contemporary home-grown talent. Pieces

range from silverware by Prince Carl

Philip Bernadotte to myrtle-leaf-embossed

crockery by Signe Persson-Melin.

STOCKHOLM

MODERNITY

SVENSKT TENN

Sibyllegatan 6 (00 46 8 20 80 25, modernity.se).

This small, stylish boutique is owned by

a Scot, Andrew Duncanson, who fell in love

with Stockholm design – and a local woman.

As well as bringing together classics such as

1950s Eames chairs and Verner Panton lamps,

he has gathered rare treasures such as 1960s

jewellery by Vivianna Torun Bülow-Hübe. The

big bonus is that Modernity ships worldwide.

Sibyllegatan 53 (00 46 8 665 33 50,

jacksons.se). Launched 30 years ago,

this is home to one of the biggest collections

of 20th-century Scandinavian furniture, by

designers ranging from Alvar Aalto to Hans

Wegner: Great for sofas, lights, chairs, fabrics

and ceramics. Everything can be viewed

online, for previewing and to purchase.

SHOP Charlotta Carlsen: Kr500 (£50) an

hour (00 46 70 316 00 98, smartcityshopping.

se); Nanette Fickendey: Kr2,500 for three

hours (00 46 40 26 066, luxurybeyond.com).

STAY Select Collection (selectcollection.

com) offers three nights at the Grand Hôtel

from £975 b&b, with flights. EAT For seafood,

Lisa Emqvist (lisaelmqvist.se) or Sturehof

(sturehof.com); for a treat, Michelin-starred

Matbaren (mdghs.com). DRINK The

Lydmar Hotel (lydmar.com); or cocktails at

Verandan at the Opera House (eng.

operakallaren.se) VIEW Take the funicular

railway (above) to the top of the spherical

Ericsson Globe. MORE visitstockholm.com

ULTRATRAVEL

CHOICE

3 ESSENTIAL ADDRESSES

Heirlooms Jerk Malmsten at his shop, with pieces by his grandfather Carl, a pioneer of modern Swedish design

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‘I THOUGHTPALM SPRINGS

WAS JUST ASTATE OF MIND,

BUT NOWI KNOW

IT’S REAL’

With its Mid-Century Modern architecture and haunts frequented

by Sinatra and Monroe, Palm Springs was the epitome of cool

Hollywood style until its glamour faded in the 1970s. Now, finds

Douglas Rogers, the desert enclave in California is inspiring a new

generation of photographers, fashion designers and culture-seekers

In vogue A Spencer Hart

fashion shoot at Twin Palms

Estate, where Frank Sinatra

lived. Far left: Slim Aarons’

1970 photograph “Poolside

Gossip”, which inspired the

Spring 2012 collection of

American designer Derek Lam

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LCKI8KI8M<C���

Retro reverie Clockwise, from main picture: Nick Hart

(right), tailor to the stars, by the piano-shaped pool at

Twin Palms Estate; Sinatra photographed there in 1961;

the master bedroom, with its ‘period-perfect’ shagpile

carpet; and street signs, keeping the legacy alive

hey are clinking martini glasses around the pool at

Sinatra’s house in Palm Springs, California, as the

languid melody of “It Was A Very Good Year” drifts

through the open glass sliding doors of the living room

into the garden. Sunlight drenches the lawn, its shadows

forming the unmistakable pattern of piano keys on the

slat-roofed walkway leading to the garden gate. The pool

is instrumental, too – it is shaped like a grand piano – and

a blonde in a bikini is tapping her toes on its turquoise

surface, while a man in a fedora, shades and a grey polo

shirt poses against a set of twin palm trees behind her.

You could, for a minute, imagine Frank Sinatra himself

hosting this scene: Ava Gardner (with whom he lived

here) would be fixing martinis in the kitchen, Dean and

Sammy would be smoking on the sunloungers, and

beyond the high walls their celebrity pals in the Movie

Colony – Marilyn Monroe and Joe DiMaggio were across

the street, Bob Hope and Bing Crosby nearby – would be

making their way over. Sinatra famously used to hoist

a Jack Daniel’s flag from the flagpole next to those palms

to let the neighbours know it was cocktail time, and they

knew there would be hell to pay if they didn’t make it.

Ah, such was the life. It was 55 years ago that Frank

Sinatra lived at Twin Palms Estate, a low-slung,

four-bedroom ranch house built for him in 1947 by the

legendary Mid-Century Modern architect E Stewart

Williams, but the mood, the look, even the smell of the

place, are as if he never left. A Valentino recording suite

that he used is still the centrepiece of the living room, you

can see the chip in the sink where he once threw

a bottle at Ava, and the shagpile carpet and vintage

furniture are period-perfect. Indeed, the only thing that

breaks the 1950s retro reverie is the sound of English

accents and the whirr of digital cameras.

“It’s everything I imagined – but better,” beams Nick

Hart, the bespoke London tailor whose Savile Row suit

brand, Spencer Hart, is worn by such style-setters as

David Bowie, Robbie Williams, Orlando Bloom, Jay-Z and

Kanye West. Hart’s latest venture is a line of casual-wear

(polos, chinos, brogues, chunky Steve McQueen-style

sweaters) called Palm Springs, no less, which is being

photographed at the property. “I started reading about

the world that Sinatra and the Rat Pack created around

themselves,” says Hart, when I ask him what inspired the

collection. “I read their biographies, watched their films

and concerts, then began to read about Palm Springs, this

man-made paradise for players in the desert where they

lived – hidden, cool, surrounded by mountains – and this

amazing architecture… These guys were constantly in

trouble – and a lot of it happened right here.”

Palm Springs lies in the Coachella Valley in the

foothills of the San Jacinto Mountains, about 100 miles

east of Los Angeles – an important distance. “Back in the

1920s,” says Hart, “studio contracts stipulated that the

actors couldn’t be more than 100 miles from Hollywood

during filming. Palm Springs was close enough – but

also a world away.” Sinatra moved to the Movie Colony

in 1947 (he commissioned the house after earning his

first million) but the neighbourhood, two square miles

of low-slung Spanish and Desert Modern homes just east

of Palm Canyon Drive on the edge of downtown, had been

created as a Hollywood playground a generation earlier.

In 1927, entrepreneur Prescott Thresher Stevens built

El Mirador, a luxury resort hotel on North Canyon Drive.

It cost a fortune to stay: a room and three meals a day for

$26, making it one of the most exclusive resorts in the

US. By the 1930s, everyone from Greta Garbo and Clark

Gable to Einstein and Salvador Dali was coming. Because

of the scene at El Mirador, the stars began building their

holiday homes around the resort. Cary Grant moved into

a hacienda on Avenida Palmas (it was on the market for

$3 million last year); Darryl Zanuck, owner of the 20th-

Century Fox studios, the most powerful man in Hollywood

at the time, was a block away. The Movie Colony was born.

THE MOOD, THE LOOK, EVEN THE SMELL OF THE PLACE ARE AS IF SINATRA NEVER LEFT

T

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The 1940s brought a new development: Mid-Century

Modern. So many stars were commissioning homes in the

desert, architects such as Richard Neutra, Albert Frey

(a Le Corbusier protégé) and E Stewart Williams began

experimenting with new abstract forms and materials:

winged roofs, sloped walls, banks of glass, stone and

wood. “A landing pad for Martians,” Bob Hope remarked

of one house. They created free-flowing, pared-down

spaces that filled with natural light, and merged inside

and outside space, so the homes became one with the

desert landscape – the first eco-properties, in a sense.

Palm Springs became a Petri dish of Modernist

sophistication – and a great place to host a party.

Hart says there is a direct link between his clothes and

Desert Modern architecture – the narrow lapel and sharp

cut of a black jacket reflect the clean angles of the house

exterior; his Aertex polo shirts resemble the patterned,

aerated walls of many a Desert Modern home. He is

not the only fashion designer to be inspired by such an

aesthetic; the 2012 Spring Collection of Derek Lam is

a tribute to a famous Slim Aarons photograph, “Poolside

Gossip”, of a 1950s cocktail party around the pool at

Kaufmann House, designed by Richard Neutra.

“For me, it’s not so much about the clothes as about

a world,” says Hart, “the music, style and icons of an era.”

Oddly, given his infatuation, this is his first visit to the

desert enclave. “Palm Springs existed for me as a state

of mind,” he adds, smiling, “but now I know it’s real.”

That real Palm Springs is having something

of a moment. The city lost much of its allure

between the 1970s and 1990s (Rancho Mirage,

Indian Wells and La Quinta down the valley

became the new colonies of the stars)

and tourists who did come did so in ironic

tribute to the faded resorts and icons of the past.

No longer. Since the millennium, Palm Springs

has once again become a creative inspiration, cultural

touchstone and glam playground. Architecture and design

addicts flood in for Modernism Week each February,

and not just for house tours: the new Uptown Design

District, close to the old El Mirador (now a clinic), is

a funky hub of boutiques, galleries and Modern furniture

stores. Check out the Atomic Age-inspired paintings and

illustrations by the local artist Josh “Shag” Agle, at his

recently opened Shag: the Store.

Elegant, low-lit supper clubs that do Sinatra proud

are once again all the rage, and the Purple Palm, the

swanky olive-and-maroon-hued restaurant of the recently

revamped Colony Palms Hotel (which once belonged to

a Purple Gang mob boss, and the owners of the racehorse

Seabiscuit), has become the spot for gourmands. The chef,

Brian Kiepler, makes black Angus tenderloin wrapped in

pancetta, and butter-poached Maine lobster, which you

eat with a view of a courtyard pool lit up at night.

What has really reinvigorated the city, though, is

a slate of chic resort hotels, each having risen like the

phoenix from the ashes of a previous age. The most recent

comeback is the Riviera Palm Springs, just north of the

Movie Colony. The place to be seen in the 1960s (Elvis

and the Rat Pack would rehearse here for their Vegas

shows), it was boarded up only a decade ago. Now, after

a $70-million renovation by the Noble House group in

2008, it’s as glitzy as any hotel in Vegas. The 400 rooms

and suites are in seven wings circled like a roulette wheel

around a giant central swimming pool; after dinner in its

plush, red-banquetted Circa 59, guests play games on the

crystal-embossed billiards table set beneath a giant

portrait of Sinatra, just off the imperious lobby.

More discreet (and popular with the Hollywood A-list)

is the Parker Palm Springs on the East Palm Canyon

corridor, about five miles out of town, just past the new

glam-packer hot spot, the Ace Hotel. The subject of

a reality show, Welcome to the Parker, in the mid-2000s,

the property was the former estate of the singing cowboy

Gene Autry and, later, the game-show host Merv Griffin,

who ran it as a European-style resort with gardens

reminiscent of Versailles. Today the 13-acre grounds have

Zest and recreation

Clockwise, from

top: the Modernist

brick façade of the

Parker Palm Springs

hotel; the Movie

Colony Hotel; part of

Derek Lam’s spring

collection; the Citron

bar at the Viceroy

Palm Springs; and

a room at the Viceroy

ALA

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; BE

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WHERE TO STAY

Colony Palms Hotel

(001 760 969 1800,

colonypalmshotel.com).

This Spanish Colonial

hotel in the Movie Colony,

built in 1936, once housed

a speakeasy and a brothel.

It has recently had an exotic

Moorish makeover by the

celebrity designer Martyn

Lawrence-Bullard, the

centrepiece being the

palm-shaded courtyard

swimming pool with adjacent

open-air cocktail bar and

Purple Palm supper club.

Rooms are decorated

with Moroccan-style bed

throws and lanterns, while

the Winner’s Circle Suite

is a tribute to the previous

proprietors, who owned

the racehorse Seabiscuit.

Doubles from £160.

Movie Colony Hotel

(001 760 320 6340,

moviecolonyhotel.com).

Built in 1935, this 16-room

no-frills boutique hotel was

one of the first projects in

Palm Springs by the Desert

Modern architect Albert

Frey. It’s also the place

where Sinatra stayed when

Twin Palms was being built.

Simple rooms in white

and lemon tones overlook

a secluded swimming pool

or a private courtyard.

There’s a self-service “happy

hour” bar offering wine and

beer in the evenings, and

free bikes for guests – but

you won’t get waiter service

or a hip party scene as in the

old days, when Jim Morrison

jumped out of his second-

floor window into the pool.

Doubles from £63.

Riviera Palm Springs

(001 760 327 8311, psriviera.

com). A favourite of the

showbiz set in the 1960s and

70s, the Riviera (above) is the

haunt of frat boys, business

groups and weekending

hipsters from LA who gather

round the main pool sipping

cocktails from the Bikini Bar

and checking out the scene

from the cabanas. There’s

a spa, supper-club restaurant

and piano lounge; the walls

are lined with portraits of

the Golden Age stars who

partied here; and at night,

the grounds are lit by fire

pits. Glitz to make Vegas

blush. Doubles from £144.

Parker Palm Springs

(001 760 770 5000,

theparkerpalmsprings.com).

Merv Griffin’s jaded former

resort got the Hollywood

Regency treatment from

the designer Jonathan Adler,

and is now a sumptuous

hideout for Hollywood

players. The modernist brick

façade at the entrance

remains from the original,

but Adler’s bold colours and

vintage furnishings give the

interiors (above) a decadent

1930s look. Norma’s, the al

fresco café overlooking the

gardens, is a great place to

while away a day. Lounge

lizards are drawn to the

supper club, Mister Parker’s,

a moody, low-lit carpeted

cavern inspired by Studio 54

and filled with Warhol prints

and a sleek white piano – the

perfect accompaniment to

foie gras and steak au poivre.

Doubles from £237.

Viceroy Palm Springs

(001 760 320 4117,

viceroypalmsprings.com).

Celebrities (Cameron Diaz,

Kanye West) and creatives

get away from it all at this

chic boutique property in the

San Jacinto foothills. Guests

can drink cocktails and

read books on sunloungers

set around one of three

swimming pools in separate

garden courtyards, and

dine in style at night at the

intimate restaurant, Citron.

The next-door property is the

retro-classic Ingleside Inn,

popular for a late-night drink

when the Viceroy bar closes.

Doubles from £127.

WHERE TO EAT

Melvyn’s Restaurant (001

760 325 2323, inglesideinn.

com). In 1975, the amateur

restaurateur and innkeeper

Mel Haber turned away

Steve McQueen and Ali

McGraw from the opening-

night party of his new

restaurant, Melvyn’s (below).

“They arrived on a motorbike

in jeans and leather jackets,”

he explained, “and I had no

idea who they were!” After

he found out, he wanted to

call them back. Too late. The

result? Everyone thought his

was the most exclusive place

in Palm Springs. Six months

later, Sinatra asked him to

host his pre-wedding dinner.

Today, Mel and his restaurant

are still around, the latter

serving 1970s-style cobb

salads and veal Ingleside

in a kitschy-cool carpeted

dining room. What was old is

new: LA hipsters flood in for

late-night martinis and piano

music in the lounge bar.

Johnny Costa’s Ristorante

(001 760 325 4556,

johnnycostaspalmsprings.

com). At first, this

nondescript Italian restaurant

seems like any other; then

you learn that Johnny was

Frank Sinatra’s chef for

many years and now, in his

seventies, holds court here

some evenings. The decor

is not much to write home

about, but the linguini with

clams and the steak Sinatra

(New York strip sautéed

with garlic and mushrooms

in wine sauce), were both

favourites of Sinatra.

Birba (001 760 327 5678,

birbaps.com). It’s not all

supper clubs and retro

martini lounges. This new

gourmet pizza and cocktail

lounge in the Uptown Design

District is a favourite with

the arty set, featuring drinks

such as the Heated Snake

(tequila, fresh lemon and

lime and spicy habanero oil).

WHERE TO SHOP

Trina Turk (001 760 416

2856, trinaturk.com). The

local designer sells her

colourful “California chic”

clothes (above) from this

1960s Albert Frey building,

with plush vintage-modern

interiors by Kelly Wearstler.

Shag: The Store (001 760

322 3400, shagthestore.com).

Retail space showcasing the

work of the “desert atomic”

artist Josh Agle, aka Shag.

WHAT TO DO

The Palm Springs

International Film

Festival (psfilmfest.org)

takes place in 2013 from

January 10 to 21.

Palm Springs Modernism

Week (modernismweek.

com), a celebration of Mid-

Century Modern design,

takes place from February

14 to 24. Examples include

Albert Frey’s Palm Springs

Visitor Centre (below).

The Edwards Harris

Center for Architecture

and Design (psmuseum.

org/edwards-harris.php) is

scheduled to open later in

2013, in the former Santa

Fe Federal Savings & Loan

building designed by

E Stewart Williams. Restored

to its original 1960s spec,

it will house a collection

of architectural models,

drawings, photographs and

other design-related pieces.

been allowed to return to their desert roots, with mazes

of palm-shaded lawns dotted with pétanque courts and

swimming pools, around which cute staff in tennis whites

dispense fresh lemonade from citron-coloured umbrella

stands. My visit coincided with a stay by Charlize Theron,

in town for the Palm Springs International Film Festival

(founded by the former mayor, Sonny Bono, and now

America’s second biggest), and I felt we could have had

fun together. Sadly I never saw her.

For my money, though, the best new property is the

Viceroy Palm Springs in the historic Tennis Club District,

back in town, in the shadow of the San Jacinto Mountains.

The historic 1930s motor court inn, in Spanish style, with

intimate bungalows, is interspersed with three adjoining

courtyards, each with lush topiary gardens dripping with

lemon, orange and tangerine trees, and swimming pools.

The Los Angeles designer Kelly Wearstler’s iconic

Hollywood Regency interiors are a vision of opulence: the

entire hotel is decorated in bold yellow, black and white

tones, and a giant crystal chandelier hangs over the

lemon-scented restaurant-bar, Citron.

I found myself drinking here one night, and met

a glamorous Australian couple, Stephen and Patricia. They

had driven across the desert from Colorado, en route to

LA, and had only stopped in Palm Springs by chance;

Stephen had recognised the name from his childhood:

“My grandmother had a cushion with a palm tree,

a sunset and the words Palm Springs on it.” We drank

and smoked, a desert moon hovering over us, the pool

an electric blue. Through the gauze of the night, a glass

of Johnnie Walker Blue in his hand, Stephen said:

“You know, I thought Palm Springs was just a state of

mind. Now I know it’s real.”

The Sinatra Twin Palms Estate can be rented through Beau

Monde Villas (001 877 318 2090, beaumondevillas.com)

from $2,600 (about £1,630) per night. Virgin Atlantic (0844

2092 770, virgin-atlantic.com) flies daily from London

Heathrow to Los Angeles from £644 in economy and £3,159

in Upper Class. Cars can be hired from about £15 per day

(rhinocarhire.com). Information: Palm Springs Visitors

Centre (001 800 347 7746, visitpalmsprings.com).

I DID IT MY WAYFrom a supper club filled with Warhol prints to hideaways for A-listers of

today, Douglas Rogers picks the highlights of a stay in the Movie Colony

ITS THREE TOPIARY GARDENS ARE DRIPPING WITHLEMON, ORANGE AND TANGERINE TREES

Tray bien The meals on wheels service at the Parker Palm Springs

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Boats of paradise The 10-guest

liveaboard Tiger Blue at anchor

off Wayag Island, and one of its tenders

PHOTOGRAPHS BY CHRIS CALDICOTT

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INTOTHECORALTRIANGLEIt has the richest, most colourful marine life on Earth. But Indonesia’s remote

Raja Ampat archipelago, where Sir Francis Drake once sailed, is even more sublime

when explored from a majestic, top-of-the-range schooner, says Lisa Grainger

ultraADVENTURE

LCKI8KI8M<C���

ooking through the aircraft window,

it is hard to believe I am flying above

the fourth most populous country in the

world. Below stretch scenes so unspoilt

and Technicolor in their intensity that they

seem more Pixar creation than crowded

planet. In the distance, dozens of tiny, amorphous islands

ringed by white sands then turquoise shallows appear

to float in the sea. Lurid green forests extend to the

horizon – but of the 240 million people living in

Indonesia, there is no sign. There are no roads, no towns,

no harbours, just hundreds of miles of virgin Earth.

That is what makes the Raja Ampat archipelago such

a treat to visit, irrespective of the hellish two-day journey

required to reach the remote idyll from Britain, an

endurance test involving four planes. Yet despite being

on the opposite side of the planet, the far eastern islands

of Indonesia have long been an attraction for British

travellers. In the 1570s, Sir Francis Drake sailed there

in search of nutmeg, cinnamon and cloves. Three

hundred years later, the naturalist and evolutionary

theorist Alfred Russell Wallace explored the archipelago’s

abundant forests, returning home with more than

125,000 specimens of fauna and flora. Today, it is

still a place for the intrepid – except now they come

armed with cameras rather than guns.

This string of islands off the western tip of New Guinea,

accessed via the town of Sorong, on West Papua, lie at the

heart of the Coral Triangle – the area with the richest

marine life on Earth. Three-quarters of the world’s coral

species and more than 1,400 varieties of reef fish can be

found in its four million hectares of protected waters. This

is where whale sharks come to breed, where giant manta

rays frolic in sandy bays, and where sperm whales gather

to feed in the plankton-rich waters that sweep up from

the Antarctic. For anyone prepared to don a mask and

snorkel, it is a real underwater treat.

Although blissful for divers, the islands are not quite

so alluring for drivers. Of the four islands that make up

the Raja Ampat (“Four Kings”) archipelago, none has

a road – hence the growing number of boats in Sorong’s

small harbour, including Tiger Blue, the one I am sharing

with friends for five days. Ten years ago, according to

Wouter van den Houten, one of the boat’s owners and its

captain, there were just four dive boats registered in

Sorong. Today there are about 40 – of which Tiger Blue

is one of the most luxurious: a locally made wooden

phinisi, or traditional Indonesian two-masted schooner,

powered by dramatic tie-dyed red sails and a massive

diesel engine, which steams off before dawn so

passengers wake up to new scenery every morning.

Unlike most dive liveaboards, with their bunks and

small cabins, Tiger Blue is built to accommodate 10 guests

in comfort (more, should they be happy to sleep on deck),

sharing four large, en-suite cabins and several spacious

communal deck spaces. With its complement of eight

smiling, sweet-natured crew, the vessel has the feel of

a relaxed floating boutique hotel rather than a dive boat.

In the galley the Belgian chef, Lucas Hauben, whips

up duck confit or Japanese sushi as effortlessly as he does

Thai curries or Indonesian gado-gado, to be enjoyed on

the 25ft-wide main deck, shaded by a canopy. For

sunbathers, there are four rattan loungers on the top

deck, a bowsprit from which to look down at the foaming

sea and cushioned banquettes hugging the inner curve

of the bow. Indoors, guests can retreat to a cool living

room at the stern, complete with DVDs, computer games

and espresso machine. The vessel has two Ribs (rigid

LHappily adrift The shore of Wayag

island, and Tiger Blue’s bows

ultraADVENTURE

This is where whale sharks breed and manta rays frolic in sandy bays

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inflatable boats powered by outboard engines), plus

wakeboards, waterskis, kneeboards and a full range

of equipment for snorkelling and scuba diving.

The big selling point is freedom. Because Tiger Blue

can be chartered only by single groups (except for eight

weeks of the year, when set trips are available), the

itinerary is determined by the passengers. They can join

the boat as far away as Bali, or embark at Komodo Island,

famous for its “dragons”, or the volcanic Banda Islands.

We choose to explore the 15,000 square miles of the Raja

Ampat marine protected area, where our days will be

spent spotting turtles, diving with manta rays, snorkelling,

sunbathing on private beaches, climbing islands – and

following part of the route taken by Wallace.

Reading his travelogue as we sail, I can see how little

has changed since his voyage more than 150 years ago.

“During the days we had now been among the reefs

and islands, we had seen only a single small canoe,” he

wrote, on approaching the passage between the biggest

island, Waigeo, and the smallest, Gam, on July 1,

1860. “The shore seemed all desert, not a house, or

boat, or human being.”

As we enter the same passage in Ribs, it is much as

Wallace described it. “A little way inside,” he wrote,

“it becomes bound with precipitous rocks, after winding

among which for about two miles we emerged into what

seemed a lake, but was in fact a deep gulf… studded

along its shores with numbers of rocky islets… covered

with strange looking shrubs and trees, and generally

crowned by lofty and elegant palms… forming one of the

most picturesque landscapes I have ever seen.”

It is this topography that makes the archipelago so

unique. Unlike the starker, less forested Komodo Island

or the populated Bandas, littered with forts and crumbling

colonial towns, these islands are dense with impenetrable

vegetation, hence their sparse population. Cannibalism

and headhunting were regularly encountered here until

the 1970s – and more than 200 languages are still spoken

by the various tribes, many of which have only recently

made contact with the outside world.

Outside Sorong, the busy market town where we land

(via Dubai, Jakarta and Macassar), the islanders we see

aren’t that different from the tribes Wallace encountered:

fishermen and fruit-gatherers, paddling dugout canoes,

their features a mix of Aboriginal, Melanesian and

Malaysian, many with teeth filed and stained red from

chewing betel nut.

During our five-day trip, sailing more than 200 miles

Dive tribe Clockwise,

from top left: Tiger Blue

under full sail; islanders in

an outrigger canoe; the

dive master, Wouter van

den Houten; a manta ray;

dusk at Wayag; the British

naturalist Alfred Russell

Wallace; twinspot cardinal

fish among soft corals; and

a ‘floating’ islet off Waigeo

Islanders are fishermen and fruit-gatherers,

their teeth stained red from chewing betel nut

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MarieOne of the most opulent yachts in the southern

hemisphere: a 180ft ketch, sleeping eight, that spends

summer in the South Pacific. Although built for speed,

Marie contains such luxuries as a grand piano and

toys ranging from sea scooters and smart Ribs to

fishing equipment. From $200,000 (£125,000) a week,

charter only (001 954 463 0600, fraseryachts.com).

BelugaA 92ft traditional seven-

berth teak gulet, turned

into a floating boutique

hotel by the designer of

Blakes hotel, Anouska

Hempel. Its USP is its

crew of five, headed by

a charming butler. The

boat is based in the

Mediterranean and sails mostly along the Turkish and

Croatian coasts. From €40,000 (£33,000) a week,

all-inclusive (0333 700 8007, dalmatiandestinations.com).

VoyagerOne of the most luxurious of the few yachts available to

charter in Mozambique. A broad, 50ft-long catamaran with

four cabins, Voyager has a range of equipment with which

to explore the rich marine life off the Quirimbas and

Bazaruto archipelagos. From €14,245 (£11,650) a week,

excluding alcoholic drinks (00 258 21 55 66 543,

mozambiqueyachtcharters.com).

GuletEleganzaA classic Turkish gulet,

decorated in style: all

woods, pale creams and

natural fabrics, sleeping

10 in five double en-suite

cabins. The yacht, which

sails the Dalmatian coast, has an impressive range of

equipment for its size (85ft), from snorkelling gear to two

canoes and a jet ski. From €11,900 (£9,745) a week, plus

food and alcohol (0800 124 4176, saildalmatia.com).

SilolonaA super-luxurious, 164ft traditional phinisi, sleeping

10, that sails the waters between Burma and Papua

New Guinea. The level of cuisine and service is reflected in

the cost; among the 16 crew is a Padi diving instructor

and an expedition leader. From £80,000 a week, excluding

alcoholic drinks (020 8682 5400, scottdunn.com).

around the archipelago, we see only eight dugout canoes,

two of which are paddled up to us when Tiger Blue is at

anchor. One occupant asks for diesel (which is duly given)

in return for mooring in his tribe’s waters; an old, grizzled

couple, barefoot and constantly bailing water from their

rough-hewn boat, want to trade a sackful of freshly

picked lemons for money (an exchange happily agreed

by our chef, for use in a ceviche).

The interest of the islanders isn’t surprising; they

don’t get many visitors. On the uninhabited Piai Island,

where green turtles come to lay their eggs, we are only

the second party of foreign visitors the four armed

guards have seen in a year – and the first lot were

marine researchers. Things are changing, however.

In the little village of Sawinggrai, from which we

venture out at 6.30am to try and spot the elusive bird

of paradise (and fail), conservationists have helped the

islanders build a guest house, to reap some of the

potential rewards of tourism. In 2011, Prince Albert

of Monaco was a visitor. In June the same year, Maya

Hadorn, an adventurous Swiss, built and opened

Raja4Divers, a resort with six thatched beachside

rooms on the pretty island of Pef. “I’d never imagined

that a place like this could exist,” she says,

“somewhere so stunning above the water and below

it – so unspoilt, so beautiful.”

The islands are indeed spectacular. High limestone

ridges protrude from the sea like the backbone of an

enormous prehistoric beast, their thick forests heavy with

mist in the early-morning light, their red and white cliffs

reflecting on cobalt and jade seas. However, it is the

landscape beneath the sea’s surface that is particularly

unforgettable. Having dived in the Maldives, South Africa,

Mozambique, the Caribbean and Zanzibar, I can honestly

say I have never seen reefs like those of Raja Ampat. It

is not just that they are almost untouched, but ludicrously

colourful, too – as wildly patterned as a Mary Katranzou

dress, as neon-bright as an Andy Warhol print, as

multi-coloured as a Damien Hirst dot painting.

There are spots, stripes and crazy patterns wherever

you look, on creatures that appear to have been made by

a god on acid: purple and red nudibranchs, tiny molluscs

with fluted edges that flutter like Spanish dancing skirts;

the black, eerie and aptly-named batfish, outlined in what

looks like yellow marker pen; red-and-white-striped

nembrotha (sea slugs) waving blossom-like

“horns” of violent pink, yellow and red; oxeye

scads that swarm in tightly choreographed

groups of silver; and see-through ghost

pipefish that float by like pieces of spiked

coral, but with fins.

Most thrilling of all are the enormous

creatures with which one can have very close

encounters in these waters. My aim, at the

beginning of the trip, had been to sail into

Cenderawasih Bay and snorkel with whale

sharks. In just five days, however, it has proved

impossible to get that far – and, having

received reports of aggressive, unwelcoming

tribes in the area, we keep well clear.

It is no hardship, though; near Piai Island,

we are lucky enough to see turtles up close,

feeding on weed. As we moor at Pulau

Yanggelo, to dive in the Dampier Strait,

a whale swims by, spouting great bursts of

water before diving and vanishing beneath the

surface. Best of all, at Arborek Island, sitting

on the sandy bottom at a depth of 65ft, we see

six manta rays just a yard or two from us.

I have no idea just how big a manta ray is,

until one soars directly over my head. These big black

flying creatures of the deep are truly enormous: about 16ft

wide (the length of an estate car), with great “wings” that

flap like a bat’s, a wide oblong mouth with paw-like

appendages on each side, and a fearsome-looking whip of

a tail which, I learn later, can cut off a person’s arm.

Seeing the behemoths flying towards us, I feel

waves of panic at first (never a good thing

underwater). However, with the experienced

dive captain, Wouter, keeping an eye on me,

and a coral wall providing a protected spot

from which to watch in safety, my heart-rate

soon subsides. I begin to enjoy the almost balletic

underwater performance of these creatures.

It is moments like this that make travelling to the

other side of the world worthwhile. At several stages, we

are so close to the somersaulting, swirling rays that

I can see the eyes of the little yellow pilot fish that

permanently lurk in the creatures’ open mouths, watch

the lips of wrasse as they nibble their bellies clean

and, on one occasion, get in the way of a furious fight

between smaller fish as they squabble over the sandy

debris expunged by one of the gentle giants.

That evening, floating peacefully on my back in a bay,

watching the almost oily-black water become streaked

with red and gold light, I try to recall whether I have ever

seen underwater scenes so beautiful. I haven’t. We may

have spotted only three of the 550 species of bird that

inhabit this part of the world; we may have seen only one

land creature (an iguana, digging for turtle eggs) and had

very little interaction with locals, but no matter. It is the

mind-boggling scenery that we have really come to see

and explore – and that we have achieved. The other

alluring Indonesian attractions – and those tantalising

whale sharks – are now on the list for next time.

A week in Raja Ampat on Tiger Blue (tigerblue.info) costs

from $30,414 (about £19,500) for 10 guests, equating to about

£275 per person per night. The price includes all meals and

activities, and is based on sailing in low season (all dates

except the Christmas holidays and July 15 to August 31).

Exsus (020 7337 9010, exsus.com) is offering seven nights on

Tiger Blue from £2,850 per person, based on 10 sharing. The

price includes return economy flights with Cathay Pacific,

transfers, full board (excluding alcohol), and all activities.

Lunch hour Locals feed fish at Sawinggrai Village,

on the island of Gam, where there is a guest house 5 YACHTS THAT SAIL TO REMOTE REGIONS

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A PLEASURE SEEKER’SGUIDE TO THE

GREEK ISLANDS

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We may think of Greece as cheap, cheerful and, in recent months,

broke, but it’s easy to forget that, until mass tourism really took off

in the early 1990s, it was as much a rich man’s paradise as a hippie

haven. In the 1960s, opulent enclaves such as Rhodes and Mykonos

attracted visiting royalty, wealthy socialites and glitterati from the

worlds of film, music, art and fashion, from Pablo Picasso, John Lennon and Henry

Miller to Jackie Onassis and Brigitte Bardot.

There is still plenty of money around. The canny owners of the world’s biggest

merchant fleet aren’t on the breadline yet – in fact, some have been quietly buying up

tracts of Mayfair and Knightsbridge, and can still afford to send their offspring to

English public schools. Some spend their summers in discreet comfort on Chios; at the

other end of the scale, tiny Kastellorizo is a well-kept secret among wealthy Greeks, to

whom luxury means simplicity.

Meanwhile, the new breed of post-Soviet plutocrat is drawn to the more upmarket

Greek islands, with their staffed villas, crewed yachts and high-end hotels with pool suites,

sybaritic spas, cigar bars and well-stocked wine cellars. Another option is the “hotel

within a hotel”, as exemplified by the Amathus Elite Suites on Rhodes, where guests can

enjoy privacy combined with five-star-hotel services. Irrespective of recent Greek

troubles, boutique hotels continue to expand. Old mansions and village houses have been

converted, creating a new generation of smaller, more colourful design hotels where

luxury is still of the essence.

Food and drink have gone upmarket, too. In the best hotel restaurants, traditional

cooking is given a lighter modern touch, and a brigade of internationally acclaimed chefs

has found new ways to work with locally sourced ingredients. Visit Nobu, at the Hotel

Belvedere on Mykonos, to see what happens when Japanese skills are applied to the fruits

of the Aegean. Greek wines, too, are beginning to be taken seriously by connoisseurs.

Best of all, there is still an egalitarian friendliness that is hard to find elsewhere

in Europe – though be prepared for your driver or waiter to unburden his (or her)

resentment at the way Greece has been treated by its wealthier EU neighbours. This year,

for reasons not unrelated, Greece is favourably priced. At Katikies, a whitewashed enclave

on Santorini, a week in a junior suite costs £3,200, compared with £5,700 for a similar stay

at the Capri Palace on the Italian isle of Capri.

Here is our hedonist’s guide to the Greek islands, with hand-picked properties and

advice on how to travel in style. Prices are for travel in June.

Timeless beauty A cruise ship

arriving in the caldera, or flooded

volcanic crater, of Santorini, seen from

the clifftop Katikies boutique hotel

Despite current woes, Greece retains the glamour and grandeur that has lured aristocrats and tycoons for decades.

Robin Gauldie charts a realm of serene sea views, opulent mansions, quirky villas, privacy, good food and fine wine

Photographed in The Infinity Suite Lounge at The Langham, London

Suite Dreams...

The Langham, London has sprung to life, revealing the rewards of an exquisite £80 million transformation.

From your arrival through her grand entrance, your senses will be captivated by the hypnotic mix of yesterday’s

traditions and today’s style, as the original ‘Grand Hotel’ re-captures the heart of London.

Discover The Langham, London: langhamlondon.com

1c Portland Place, Regent Street, London, W1B 1JA T 44 (0) 20 7965 0191

Auckland Boston Chicago Dalian Hong Kong

London Los Angeles Melbourne Shanghai Shenzhen

LCKI8KI8M<C���

Ottoman vassals and whose grand mansions are

still dotted around the Kampos district, inland from

the island capital. Indeed, it is to a Genoese noble

family that the island owes one of the most

outstanding hotels in Greece.

The palatial estate that houses the Argentikon

Luxury Suites (00 30 22710 33111, argentikon.gr;

from around £400 per night for a double) was

the home of the Genoese Argenti family from the

16th century until 1822, when the Argenti joined the

Greek uprising against the Ottomans. Four of them

were executed when the rebellion failed (marble

busts in the hotel’s lush grounds commemorate

them) and the rest fled to Italy, France and England.

The palazzo fell into disrepair and was finally

destroyed by an earthquake in 1881. What you

see now is a lavish reconstruction, begun by

a descendant of the Argenti dynasty in 1900.

Philip Argenti spent millions on the project,

and it shows. With its marble columns and

mellow-hued stone walls, it is a slice of medieval

Italy transplanted to a Greek island and surrounded

by formal gardens scented and made colourful

by thousands of citrus trees and rose bushes. But

there is nothing antiquated about the facilities,

which include a classy outdoor pool, an excellent

restaurant, where the wine list includes bottles

from the hotel’s own vineyard, and a well-equipped

fitness centre with sauna and whirlpool.

This is not a place for those who love

minimalism. Its eight suites, housed in five separate

villas, are unabashedly opulent, with period

furniture, crystal chandeliers and frescoed ceilings.

Each has a separate living room, a veranda, air

conditioning for sultry summer nights and

a fireplace for spring and autumn evenings.

Service is ubiquitous without being intrusive,

and includes twice-daily housekeeping. The only

KASTELLORIZO

Way down south, the tiny island of Kastellorizo is

as far off the beaten track as it is possible to get

in Greece. In high summer (July and August) its

fjord-like blue harbour, lined with old Ottoman-style

houses in liquorice-allsorts colours, hosts a flotilla

of rich folks’ yachts. Silvio Berlusconi, Tom Hanks

and Eric Clapton are (reportedly) on the summer

guest list; ex-Pink Floyd axeman David Gilmour liked

it so much that he recorded an album (On an Island,

2006) inspired by its charms.

The place to stay is the Mediterraneo (00 30 22

4604 9007, mediterraneo-megisti.com; ground-floor

suite from around £140 per night), one of the most

colourfully charming small hotels in Greece. The

owner Marie Rivalant, a Parisienne, has converted

an old waterfront mansion into a colourful haven,

with bedrooms looking out over the harbour (though

the ground-floor suite is the best) and a sunbathing

terrace on the quayside. It doesn’t have a pool, but

a bathing ladder drops you into the aquarium-clear

sea, where tiny, rainbow-coloured fish swim around

your toes. There is no à la carte restaurant or bar,

either, but breakfast is a lavish Levantine affair of

yoghurt, island honey, nuts, home-made preserves,

cheese and fresh-baked bread – and with a chain

of tavernas and café-bars all around the waterfront,

there is no need to eat at the same place twice.

The island’s big “must-see” sight is its blue

grotto, the equal of the much more famous one on

Capri but blessedly free of singing gondoliers. If you

feel like changing continents, you can charter a boat

to putter across the bay to Kas, just a few miles

away on the Turkish mainland. In short, Kastellorizo

offers luxury of a different kind: it really is one of

the world’s great escapes.

LESBOS

Despite tales that Greece might sell off some of its

thousands of uninhabited islands to plutocrats, to

help meet its debts, renting one of them remains

an impossible dream. A handful of islands, ripe for

development as exclusive mini-resorts, languish on

the books of the Canada-based company Private

Islands Online, with asking prices starting

at about €5 million (£4 million), but Greece is not

about to become the Maldives any time soon.

The next best thing is Villa Faros (001 647 477

5581, privateislandsonline.com; from around

£23,300 per week, sleeps 16), on a private peninsula

near Sigri, on the big, calm island of Lesbos. This is

more than just a villa. It offers the kind of yoga and

spa treatments found in five-star hotels. There are

three private beaches, a seawater infinity pool, a

heated indoor wave pool and gardens that provide

organic fruit and vegetables for guests at the villa.

At the jetty, a 30ft speedboat awaits – and for those

in a real hurry to get down to the serious business

of relaxing, the property has a helipad.

CHIOS

Those who make it to Chios are pleasantly surprised

to find themselves outnumbered by locals. There is

a reason for this, say Chiots: this big island in the

north-east Aegean is the ancestral home of several

Greek multi-millionaire shipping dynasties, who still

keep villas here. They prefer their holidays to be

undisturbed by the antics of foreign hoi polloi, and

have used their local clout to discourage large-scale

development. So there are no big resort hotels – but

there is at least one real boutique gem.

With its uncrowded beaches and quaint

villages dotted around a rolling hinterland of fields

and orchards, Chios feels thoroughly Greek. To

Greeks, it is synonymous with the country’s finest

ouzo, a sweet and subtle tipple that is as different

from the cheap liquorice firewater found in most

tourist bars as a 20-year-old malt whisky is from

a supermarket blend.

Like many Greek islands, Chios has produced

more history than it has been able to consume.

It is famous for its old-fashioned mastichochoria

(mastic villages), which grew wealthy from the

precious gum of the mastic bush, much prized as

a breath-freshener by Ottoman sultans and their

harems. Behind high walls, labyrinthine alleys lead to

village squares where stonework is decorated in

intricate harlequin patterns of black and white,

embellished in summer with scarlet strings of drying

peppers and tomatoes.

In medieval times, Chios fell into the hands of

Genoese merchant-aristocrats who later became

The shipping dynasties have used their clout to discourage development

Greek unorthodox Colourful Kastellorizo, a few miles from the Turkish mainland, has a French-run boutique hotel. Below: painted stonework on Chios

APLEASURE SEEKER’S GUIDETO THEGREEK ISLANDS

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snag is that you may not want to step beyond the

walls of this calm oasis, but if you do feel like

exploring, the island’s capital – with its museum,

ruined castle and plenty of good restaurants – is just

a few minutes away. Arrivals and departures are

smoothed by private car transfers, and the airport is

only two-and-a-half miles from the property.

For full-on luxury, Argentikon is hard to match,

but if it is full – and booking well ahead is strongly

recommended – try the smaller, even more intimate

Perleas Mansion (00 30 22710 32217, perleas.gr;

from around £100 per night for a double), set in four

acres of grounds. With just three bedrooms, this

17th-century farmhouse (run by a husband-and-wife

team) feels more like your own private holiday

home. It has no pool, though there is a sunbathing

terrace beside a pretty lily pond.

CORFU

Private villas with pools are the way to go on Corfu

(especially for families). There are plenty to choose

from, and at the high end they come complete

with household staff, plus a boat with a skipper.

The best properties are in the better-off areas of

the north-east, set on semi-private bays and coves

overlooked by the forested slopes of Mount

Pantokrator, a million miles away in spirit from the

fleshpot resorts of the south.

This is glorious isolation, which is why Corfu has

been favoured by sundry oligarchs and millionaire

political fixers. But when you feel the need to

explore, the island has plenty to offer: the World

Heritage old town, with its Venetian fortresses,

Italianate churches and town houses, and faux-

Parisian arcades, is about 30 minutes’ drive away.

Heading in the other direction, there is a cluster

of bars and restaurants around the harbour at

Kassiopi. If you need activity, there is riding in the

nearby valley of Avlaki, the highly commended Corfu

Golf Club in the Ropa valley, a plethora of

watersports from windsurfing to scuba diving, and

phenomenal views of mainland Greece and Albania

from the summit of Pantokrator, reached by

four-wheel drive (with the final stretch on foot).

A boat is more than just a luxury in this part of

Corfu – it’s an essential if you are going to make the

most of exploring secluded bays and beaches. You

don’t need a licence to pilot a boat with a motor up

to 30 horsepower but for bigger-engined vessels you

need a certificate of competence. The answer? Hire

a boat complete with skipper.

The Bay Estate, near Agios Stefanos, has villas

sleeping up to 10, and mooring space for vessels of

up to 70ft – big enough for all but the showiest of

oligarchs – and you can hire a skippered motor

cruiser for eight to 10 people for €1,500-€2,000

(£1,250-£1,670) a day. Staying there is expensive, it’s

true – a villa costs almost £32,000 per week in July,

but the price includes a housekeeper (five hours

a day) and a chef and host serving breakfast,

lunch and dinner six days a week. In June the same

villa – with a 40ft infinity pool and access to a

secluded beach in the villa grounds – costs £17,615,

with a housekeeper but no meals. It’s the perfect

mix of high-end hotel service with villa privacy. Book

through CV Travel’s Private Collection (020 7401

1031, cvprivatecollection.com).

The next best thing is the Barbati Beach

House, which sleeps six to 10, right on Barbati

beach. It has a large pool and lush gardens, and

a cook and boat hire are available. Prices start

at £2,620 per week, again with CV Travel.

SANTORINI

Long before the Venetians seized and renamed

Santa Irene (now Santorini) in the 13th century, it

was and often still is called Thira. Long before that,

the ancients knew it as Kallisti – “the most

beautiful”. Today, the island lives up to its old name,

but its natural beauty is harsh, even apocalyptic.

Arriving by sea, you enter a vast blue caldera,

created when a volcanic explosion blew the island

apart around 3,600 years ago and wrecked or

blighted the Bronze Age civilisations of the eastern

Mediterranean. Red and black cliffs loom above the

sea, and whitewashed houses and blue-domed

churches perch along the rim of the sea-flooded

crater, hundreds of feet above the Aegean.

The same volcanism that destroyed the ancient

civilisation has endowed Santorini with a surprisingly

fertile soil. It is hard to believe that this Martian

landscape, with its red and grey tufa hills and

terraces of greyish clinker and ash-like soil, is one

of the most productive in Greece. Every square

foot has been painstakingly terraced, and shrubby

vines – few of them more than 3ft high – crouch in

their own little foxholes. The combination of hot sun,

volcanic soil and the island’s own Assyrtiko grapes

produce wines unique to Santorini which

increasingly win plaudits from connoisseurs.

In 1953, an earthquake rocked the island, all but

destroying the village of Oia, on its northern tip. The

village remained almost deserted for decades, only

to rise from the ashes in the 1980s to become one

of the most gorgeous holiday hot spots in Greece,

with a plethora of superb boutique hotels.

Competition is fierce, but Katikies (00 30 22860

71401, katikies.com; from £380 per night for a

double) stands out, having one of the world’s great

infinity pools and a collection of vivid white cottages

carved out of the volcanic rock, 300ft above the sea.

The hotel’s open-air gourmet restaurant is one of

the best on the island, and there are sunset wine

tastings to introduce visitors to Greece’s best

vintages. The staff – immaculate in white uniforms –

are multinational, multilingual, friendly and efficient.

You may not want to venture out, but do, if

only to take a private boat trip out into the deep

A boat is more than a luxury on Corfu – it is essential for exploring

Private life The Bay Estate, Corfu

and, right, Argentikon, on Chios

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GETTING THERE

British Airways, Aegean

Airlines, EasyJet and

Olympic Air offer

scheduled flights from

London airports to Athens.

Aegean and Olympic offer

connecting flights from

Athens to six of the islands

featured here. For

Kastellorizo, fly to Rhodes,

then take a short hop with

Olympic. EasyJet offers

scheduled services to

Athens, Corfu, Mykonos,

Rhodes and Santorini.

IN TRANSIT

Depending on your flight

connections, you may opt

to spend a night in Athens.

At the Sofitel Athens

Airport (sofitel.com),

a couple of minutes from

the terminal; prestige

suites cost from £210.

From there, take a 15-

minute cab ride to Rafina,

where a dozen open-air

restaurants surround the

fishing harbour. Though

simple in appearance,

these places aren’t cheap,

and are frequented by

wealthy Athenians who

drive there with their

families to sample red

mullet, lobster, octopus,

sea urchins and other

Mediterranean staples,

displayed on trays of ice.

TRANSFERS

Consider travelling from

Athens to the islands by

private plane or helicopter.

For aircraft options and

prices, see ellada.net/

helicopter_services and

privatejetscharter.net.

The Greek islands are,

of course, prime yacht

charter territory, too. The

list of vessels available

is comprehensive, ranging

from steer-it-yourself

luxury sailing boats to fully

crewed motor yachts

and cruisers complete

with a chef and steward.

For choices, see

yachting-greece.com; the

company can also arrange

helicopter transfers and

private plane charters.

PACKAGES

Numerous tour operators

offer tailor-made holidays

to Greece, staying in

boutique hotels and

villas and benefiting from

such services as

chauffeured transfers

and private tours. They

include Sovereign Luxury

(sovereign.com), CV

Travel (cvtravel.co.uk),

The Villa Collection

(gicthevillacollection.

com), Abercrombie

& Kent (abercrombiekent.

co.uk) and Cachet Travel

(cachet-travel.com).

Small Luxury Hotels

of the World (slh.com)

features more than

30 boutique properties in

Greece. See Telegraph

Travel (telegraph.co.uk/

greece) for further advice

on where to stay in

Greece, plus guides

to individual islands.

THE FIVE-STAR ISLAND HOP

blue caldera to swim in the warm springs around

Nea Kameni, or to eat the freshest fish at a rickety

quayside table.

With a global reputation and only 29 rooms,

Katikies fills up fast; an excellent alternative, by the

sea in Vlihada at the other end of the island, is the

Notos Therme & Spa Hotel (00 30 22860 81115,

notosthermespa.com; from around £150 per night

for a double), with a semi-private beach, and spa

treatments based around Santorini’s natural

thermal springs and volcanic mud.

MYKONOS

Mykonos is where jet-set travel began in Greece,

and although it is no longer quite as exclusive as it

was in the 1960s, its airport still sees a steady flow

of private jets and helicopters as well as scheduled

flights. In recent years, its cruise and ferry terminal

has been relocated away from the excruciatingly

pretty main village, leaving its harbour once again

to fishing boats, private yachts and small excursion

boats which ferry visitors to the serene temple

ruins on Delos, the sacred island of the ancients.

Conspicuous consumption has always been

one of the hallmarks of Mykonos, and there is no

shortage of fine jewellers, designer boutiques and

cigar bars in the narrow village streets. Equally,

there is no shortage of great hotels, in the village

itself and on the island’s sandy beaches. They do

get jam-packed in summer, so a hotel with

a gorgeous pool is a better bet.

One such is the Hotel Belvedere (00 30 22890

25122, belvederehotel.com; from £313 per night for

a double), set a little above the whitewashed

labyrinth of the inner village: and a dream. Palm

trees around the free-form pool? Check. Evening

cocktails in the well-named Sunset Bar? Check.

Matsuhisa Mykonos, the only Nobu restaurant in

Greece? Check. Cellar with a list of 5,000 wines

(particularly strong on Greek and New World

varietals)? Check. All of this is built in and around an

18th-century mansion with west-facing verandas,

perfect for watching the sun set over the bay.

If your taste inclines towards 1960s glamour

with a 21st-century twist, the Mykonos

Theoxenia Hotel (00 30 22890 22230,

mykonostheoxenia.com; from £210 per night for

a double) is a great alternative. Like the Belvedere,

it is far enough from the village centre to avoid the

throngs of cruise passengers, but close enough for

Calm waters Melenos Lindos, left,

on Rhodes, which has 12 suites;

and Mykonos Theoxenia

effortless window-shopping and bar-hopping. The

architecture echoes ancient temple precincts, while

inside it is all pop-art colours. You half expect Jackie

O to walk in at any moment.

RHODES

Rhodes has one of the world’s great medieval

walled cities, a dazzlingly attractive white village

that is the envy of many other isles, and – so its

proponents claim – more sunshine than anywhere

else in Greece. The hot tip here is the Amathus

Elite Suites (00 30 22410 89900, amathus-hotels.

com; pool suites from £400 per night), a hotel-

within-a-hotel overlooking the beach at Ixia, 10

minutes from the medieval ramparts of the Old

Town. The suites have sea views, some come with

private pools and the attentive and friendly staff

deliver trays of island goodies – sweets, cakes,

liqueurs and other treats – every afternoon.

Breakfast is particularly lavish (take full

advantage of the complimentary sparkling wine

from the local winery). I’m not normally a fan of

half-board deals, but à la carte dinner lives up

to the rest of the services. There’s a spa and

health club, a tranquil, black-marble pool where

scarlet and electric-blue dragonflies zoom

overhead as you swim. A vast, lagoon-style

pool is shared with the main wing of the hotel,

and an underpass leads direct to the

Amathus’s own stretch of beach.

Tearing yourself away from all this takes

an effort, but the hotel can lay on a private car

to take you to the Old Town, with its

13th-century ramparts, the opulent Palace

of the Grand Masters, and a handful of really

outstanding restaurants. One of the best is

Alexis (00 30 22410 29347) at Sokratous 18,

which specialises in old favourites, from grilled

lobster and red mullet to octopus carpaccio

and clams in ouzo. Expect to pay €40-€50

(£33-£40) each, including wine.

Lindos – one of those iconic white villages,

beloved of the glitterati since the 1960s – is the

island’s other nexus of boutique hotels. The gem

here is Melenos Lindos (00 30 22440 32222,

melenoslindos.com; from £220 per night), where

the 12 suites are inspired by the unique

vernacular architecture of the village, with

monochrome pebble mosaics and canopied beds.

Each has its own terrace, and black-and-white

tiled patios overlook the beach.

ALA

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UP

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LCKI8KI8M<C���

In this Olympic year, we celebrate

winners – not only the world’s best

athletes, but achievers who set the gold

standard in other fields. On the following

pages, we present our winners: the 100

finest things in luxury travel, chosen

by Ultratravel readers. From favourite

destinations to the people who take you

there, here is our 2012 hot list

LCKI8KI8M<C���

AIRLINES 1-25

BEST SHORT HAUL

winner

British Airways ba.com

Having bought up its main rival, BMI, British Airways is now the only

serious player in the premium short-haul market. It continues to

innovate, with a sleek website, new routes on the way, and business

class installed on its Moscow service. From Russia with love, indeed.

runners-up

BMI flybmi.com

EasyJet easyjet.com

Lufthansa lufthansa.com

Swiss swiss.com

BEST LONG HAUL

winner

Emirates emirates.com

In 1985, the airline had just one flight a week, to Karachi; now it offers

2,500, serving 120 destinations. An early adopter of the A380, it has

ambitious expansion plans (100 planes on order) and award-winning

facilities that have put Dubai at the centre of the aviation world.

runners-up

British Airways ba.com

Qantas qantas.com.au

Singapore Airlines singaporeair.com

Virgin Atlantic virgin-atlantic.com

BEST CABIN CREW

winner

Singapore Airlines singaporeair.com

The elegant Kebaya sarong, designed by Parisian couturier Pierre

Balmain, was first adopted as the uniform of the “Singapore Girl” in

1968 and has remained unchanged since. The airline’s unerringly

good service makes it the Roger Federer of the airline world.

runners-up

British Airways ba.com

Emirates emirates.com

Etihad Airways etihadairways.com

Virgin Atlantic virgin-atlantic.com

BEST LOUNGE

winner

Virgin Atlantic Clubhouse, Heathrow virgin-atlantic.com

The epitome of cool transit, with chandeliers, a 45ft cocktail bar,

a Cowshed spa, Japanese water pools, and a multiscreen cinema.

runners-up

British Airways T5, Heathrow ba.com

Emirates, Dubai emirates.com

Qatar Airways, Doha qatarairways.com

Singapore Airlines, Changi singaporeair.com

BEST AIRPORT

winner

Changi, Singapore changiairport.com

The accolades keep rolling in for Changi – one for every day of the

year. With six open-air gardens, spas, a gym, a swimming pool,

a hotel and 200 species of foliage, it is the model for fret-free flying.

runners-up

Dubai International dubaiairport.com

Hong Kong International hongkongairport.com

London Heathrow T5 heathrowairport.com

Schiphol, Amsterdam schiphol.nl

High fliers The view from the new Dreamliner (top),

soon to be added to the British Airways fleet. Left: the

children’s slide at Changi Airport. Above: one of

the ‘Singapore Girls’ in traditional Kebaya sarong

LCKI8KI8M<C���

BEST IN THE UNITED KINGDOM

winner

The Savoy, London fairmont.com/savoy

The most expensive refurbishment in history (£220 million) has

clearly paid off. The Beaufort Bar now oozes elegance; its suites

have the finest river views in London; and the Savoy Grill exudes

a cosy, sophisticated ambiance. Monroe would have approved.

runners-up

Chewton Glen, Hampshire chewtonglen.com

Mandarin Oriental Hyde Park, London mandarinoriental.com/london

The Dorchester, London thedorchester.com

The Goring, London thegoring.com

BEST IN EUROPE

winner

Four Seasons Hotel George V, Paris fourseasons.com/paris

Built in 1928, this much-loved landmark is steeped in history and its

opulence is unmatched in Paris (one Presidential Suite has its own

gym, another its own office). Despite competition from new hotels

launching in the French capital, the George V is as seductive as ever.

runners-up

Hotel Arts Barcelona hotelartsbarcelona.com

Hôtel de Crillon, Paris crillon.com

Hotel Cipriani, Venice hotelcipriani.com

Ritz Paris ritzparis.com

BEST IN THE AMERICAS

winner

The Waldorf=Astoria, New York

waldorfnewyork.com

Renowned for more than a century, the hotel’s winning combination

of old-world luxury and contemporary convenience continues to

impress. Readers are charmed by its art-deco interiors, Midtown

location and classic dishes such as the Waldorf salad, invented here.

runners-up

The Beverly Hills Hotel, LA beverlyhillshotel.com

Four Seasons Hotel New York fourseasons.com/newyork

The Carlyle, New York rosewoodhotels.com/carlyle

The Plaza, New York theplaza.com

BEST IN ASIA

winner

Raffles Hotel, Singapore raffles.com/singapore

Opened in 1887, the serial award-winner has 15 restaurants and

bars, its own shopping arcade, and a Victorian-style playhouse.

The grand dame of hospitality continues to innovate: its new

Billecart-Salmon champagne brunch is the first in Singapore.

runners-up

Mandarin Oriental, Bangkok mandarinoriental.com/bangkok

Mandarin Oriental, Hong Kongmandarinoriental.com/hongkong

Peninsula, Hong Kong peninsula.com

Shangri-La, Singapore shangri-la.com/singapore

BEST IN AUSTRALASIA

winner

Shangri-La, Sydney shangri-la.com/sydney

The hotel’s Chi spa has become a Sydney institution, as has the

36th-floor Altitude restaurant, with its spectacular views. Popular

services include free Wi-Fi, express check-out and a pillow menu.

runners-up

Four Seasons Hotel Sydneyfourseasons.com/sydney

InterContinental Sydneyichotelsgroup.com/intercontinental

The Observatory Hotel, Sydneyobservatoryhotel.com.au

The Langham, Melbournemelbourne.langhamhotels.com.au

BEST IN THE MIDDLE EAST

winner

Burj Al Arab, Dubai burj-al-arab.com

Consistently voted the most luxurious place to stay, the “billowing

sail” has set the standard in the Middle East. Treats include

restaurants in the clouds, in the atrium (the world’s biggest) and

under the sea, as well as 24-hour butlers and a fleet of Rolls-Royces.

runners-up

Armani Hotel Dubai dubai.armanihotels.com

Emirates Palace Abu Dhabi kempinski.com/abudhabi

Jumeirah Beach Hotel, Dubai jumeirah.com

The Chedi, Muscat ghmhotels.com

BEST IN AFRICA/THE INDIAN OCEAN

winner

Le Touessrok, Mauritius letouessrokresort.com

With five restaurants, a Givenchy spa and a Bernhard Langer golf

course among the resort’s facilities, there is more to occupy

guests than high-adrenaline watersports and perfect beaches.

runners-up

Banyan Tree, Seychelles banyantree.com

Cape Grace, Cape Town capegrace.com

Conrad Maldives Rangali Island conradhotels3.hilton.com

Mount Nelson Hotel, Cape Town mountnelson.co.za

BEST LUXURY CHAIN

winner

Four Seasons fourseasons.com

Scrupulous attention to detail is what impresses Ultratravel readers

most, expressed in reliably comfortable rooms and super-connected

concierges. This year, hotels will open in China, Baku, St Petersburg

and Toronto – where the first Four Seasons was launched in 1960.

runners-up

Jumeirah jumeirah.com

Kempinski kempinski.com

Mandarin Oriental mandarinoriental.com

Shangri-La shangri-la.com

HOTELS 26-65

By George, they’ve won it

The Four Seasons Hotel George V,

in Paris. Below: the golf course

at Le Touessrok in Mauritius

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BEST TOUR OPERATOR

winner

Kuoni kuoni.co.uk

Founded by Swiss entrepreneur Alfred Kuoni 106 years ago, the

company continues to win the custom – and compliments – of

Ultratravel readers for its tailor-made itineraries at the top end.

runners-up

Abercrombie & Kent abercrombiekent.com

Audley Travel audleytravel.com

Cox & Kings coxandkings.co.uk

Elegant Resorts elegantresorts.co.uk

BEST CRUISE LINE

winner

Cunard cunard.co.uk

Modern facilities meet old-fashioned style on the flagship Queen

Mary 2, consistently voted the grandest liner on Earth. The ship’s

white-glove service is as acclaimed by readers as the pleasant

diversions available on board, from a planetarium to a croquet lawn.

The new 1930s-styled sister ship, Queen Elizabeth, appeals to the

same discerning market with such luxuries as marble bathrooms.

runners-up

Crystal Cruises crystalcruises.com

P&O Cruises pocruises.com

Royal Caribbean International royalcaribbean.co.uk

Silversea Cruises silversea.com

BEST RIVER CRUISE LINE

winner

Viking River Cruises vikingrivercruises.co.uk

The winner in this category ticks all the boxes: six brand-new ships;

a private balcony in every stateroom; modern Scandinavian design;

restaurants with panoramic views. Its Viking Emerald has the largest

suite in river cruising; six similar vessels will be launched this year.

runners-up

AmaWaterways amawaterways.com

The River Cruise Line rivercruiseline.co.uk

Scenic Tours scenictours.co.uk

Uniworld River Cruises uniworldrivercruises.co.uk

OPERATORS 66-80

Simply the best Qualia on Hamilton Island,

Queensland – a resort in Australia, winner of

the Best Country category. Below left: Viking

River Cruises, voted Best River Cruise Line

DESTINATIONS 81-100

BEST SPA

winner

Banyan Tree, Phuket banyantree.com/en/phuket

The first Banyan Tree to open, in 1995, is still a firm favourite with

readers. Its exceptional spa offers not just signature “journeys”,

but treatments by master therapists, and, from this year, wellness

packages supervised by an ayurvedic doctor. The resort’s

well-appointed, Thai-styled lagoon villas also win readers’ votes.

runners-up

Champneys, Tring champneys.com/tring

Chiva-Som, Hua Hin chivasom.com

The BodyHoliday, St Lucia thebodyholiday.com

The Royal Crescent Hotel, Bath royalcrescent.co.uk

BEST GOLF RESORT

winner

The Gleneagles Hotel, Scotland gleneagles.com

This “castle” hotel wins plaudits for its sublime setting and cuisine

unrivalled anywhere in Scotland (Andrew Fairlie’s two Michelin

stars look like permanent fixtures). Its three first-class golf courses

include the PGA Centenary which, in 2014, will host the Ryder Cup.

runners-up

La Manga, Spain lamangaclub.com

Loch Lomond Golf Club, Scotland lochlomond.com

Pebble Beach, United States pebblebeach.com

St Andrews, Scotland fairmont.com/standrews

BEST CITY

winner

New York iloveny.com

Our readers are not the only fans of this vibrant city. In 2011, the

number of visitors exceeded 50 million – and more than a million of

them were Britons. As well as Broadway musicals and non-stop

shopping, New York offers an ever-expanding range of restaurants

(150 in 2011) and luxury hotels including The Chatwal and The Setai.

runners-up

Barcelona barcelonaturisme.com

Dubai dubai.com

Paris parisinfo.com

Sydney sydney.com

BEST COUNTRY

winner

Australia australia.com

This perennial favourite of Britons (640,000 of whom visited last

year) has much to offer the luxury traveller. In the wild Kimberley

region of Western Australia, facilities include a new air service and

safari-style camps. Among the other attractions are the wildlife,

15,000 golf courses and a new generation of award-winning chefs.

runners-up

Italy italia.it/en

New Zealand newzealand.com

Thailand tourismthailand.org

United States discoveramerica.comALA

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Star turn At the Hôtel du Cap-

Eden-Roc (opposite), with its

22 acres of pine-filled gardens,

guests can enjoy the Hollywood

lifestyle on the French Riviera

PHOTOGRAPHS BY ADAM PARKER

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SECRETS OF THE EDEN-ROC GUESTBOOK

SECRETS OF THE HOTEL DU CAP

Elizabeth Taylor’s luggage arrived there by truck;

Mel Gibson showed up with 300 friends; Sharon Stone

ordered a Nebuchadnezzar of champagne – and

a harpist. Somehow, the stars who stayed at the

legendary Riviera hotel also found time to sign its

Golden Book. Peter Hughes gets a preview

LCKI8KI8M<C���

n the pleasant shore of the

French Riviera, about half

way between Marseilles

and the Italian border,

stands a large, proud,

rose-coloured hotel.

Deferential palms cool its

flushed facade, and before

it stretches a short dazzling

beach. Lately it has become

a summer resort of notable

and fashionable people.

So begins Tender is the Night, the

novel that defined the South of France

in the age when it shimmied out of Edwardian languor

and into 20th-century excess. In F Scott Fitzgerald’s book,

the Riviera filled the foreground and the hotel, which

he called Gausse’s, was its quintessence. The model for

Gausse’s was the Hôtel du Cap-Eden-Roc at Antibes.

Now white as pearl with dove-grey shutters, rather than

“rose-coloured”, the hotel is still emphatically in the

business of pampering “notable and fashionable” people.

And whatever cools it these days – more a surrounding

22-acre park of conspiratorial pines than “deferential

palms” – it is incontrovertibly cool. The colours are

cool – paint of the palest ivory, hints of gilt, marble as

blonde as arctic fox, carpets in the hues of summer

gardens and the sand of coral beaches. A glass lift,

framed in polished brass, rises from the foyer as cool

as a crystal tardis. The guest list is cooler still.

It comes straight from the reddest of Hollywood

carpets. And here they are, seen for the first time, legends

from the Cinemascope pantheon distilled to a few

flourishes of flamboyant ink. But it is ink uniquely

applied to surfaces stroked by stellar hands, the

thrilling, if vicarious, intimacy of the autograph.

Collected in what the hotel calls its Golden Book are

contributions from a list of straight As. Clint Eastwood

rubs signatures with Sharon Stone; Jennifer Lopez with

Colin Firth. Turn the page on Ralph Fiennes and there is

Mick Jagger. The “book” is a collection of sheets of fine

vellum that will eventually be preserved between covers.

So Dustin Hoffman and Jim Belushi will one day be

bound with Russell Crowe, Cate Blanchett and Geoffrey

Rush; Mel Gibson will share a stiff jacket with Celine

Dion, Bruce Willis with Audrey Tautou, Andy Garcia with

Grace Jones. Gordon Gekko, James Bond and Sherlock

Holmes have signed as their alter egos of Michael

Douglas, Pierce Brosnan and Robert Downey Junior.

In the hotel’s first Golden Book, now locked away in

Paris, there are doodles by Chagall and Picasso. Here we

must content ourselves with a deft caricature by Johnny

Depp – of Johnny Depp – and quick-fire sketches by the

likes of Tom Hanks, Tim Burton and Karl Lagerfeld.

Every spring the stars arrive in their constellations

for the Cannes Film Festival. The Hôtel du Cap is close

enough to nip across to the Croisette by speedboat,

far enough away for film folk to laze in their own

oh-so-special firmament. It’s where Elizabeth Taylor’s

luggage arrived by truck considerably in advance of

Elizabeth Taylor, and where Tom Cruise is preceded by his

instructions for making salad, a melange involving green

beans, artichoke, tomatoes and leaves of arugula and

spinach – accompanied with a glass of sheep’s milk.

It’s where Lars von Trier turned up in a camper van and

Bill Cosby stood to attention in a small launch, sailor’s

cap and T-shirt, and took the salute of passing yachts.

Every day, Eddie Murphy ate a turkeyburger here, John

Travolta ordered vegetable quiches – one at 8am, another

at 2am – and Kevin Costner’s cheeseburgers combined

Charolais beef with Emmenthal cheese. It was a previous

general manager who summed up the secret of the hotel

as its simplicity. “When on vacation, the rich like to pay

maharajah prices to live like boy scouts,” he explained.

The house rules are made of exceptions: Monica

Belluci was allowed to spend a night in one of the beach

cabanas; Mel Gibson booked a table for 30 and turned

up with a party of 300. To adapt an exchange in Tender is

the Night, “Do they like it here – this place?” Came the

response: “They have to like it. They invented it.”

In his book on the hotel, journalist François Simon

tells how Sharon Stone, “in a moment of inspiration”,

first requested a harpist dressed in an Irish costume, then

a Nebuchadnezzar of champagne. “Or maybe it was the

other way round.” Simon was the Riviera correspondent

Legends from the Cinemascope pantheon are distilled to a few flourishes of flamboyant ink

Post script Johnny Depp, pictured (below) with Penelope Cruz at the Cannes Film Festival, marked his stay at the Hôtel du Cap (above) with a self-portrait

Bon mot A thank-you from Tom Hanks

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The hotel is close enough to nip across to the Croisette by speedboat

for Le Figaro, which is appropriate because it was the

newspaper’s founder who in 1870 opened the first hotel on

the site, in the handsome Napoleon III building.

He supposedly intended it for writers with a creative

block. Writers who are creating are not the most

promising of business propositions; writers who aren’t

spell disaster. The hotel foundered until, in 1889, it was

reopened by a brave Piedmontese, Antoine Sella. As

Simon tells it, “The hotel was occupied by only two old

Englishwomen. They each paid 12 francs per day even

though Sella had a 40-person staff, five horses for the

coaches and a small omnibus that went to the train

station every day to greet potential guests – who

never came. Everyone predicted a new failure.”

Everyone was wrong. The business was saved by

James Gordon Bennett, owner of the New York

Herald, who wanted somewhere quiet for his

recently widowed sister to stay. Objecting to

weekly bills, he put down 40,000 francs and asked

to be informed when the money ran out.

Hotel du Cap was now attracting custom of the

aristocratic and the rich, who in those days were one

and the same. Then it opened in winter and closed in

summer; now it is the other way round. But if the

clientele was fashionable, the facilities were not.

In 1903, Sella was taking Lord Onslow, a regular guest,

to the station. Sella remarked that the hotel was in need

of central heating, private baths and a lift, if only he could

afford them. His lordship reached for his chequebook and

wrote out a sum sufficient not merely to modernise the

place but to buy it. “We can settle the mortgage at a later

date” was his wafted comment as he boarded his train.

In 1970, history nearly repeated itself when André Sella,

Antoine’s son, decided to sell. On the recommendation of

a member of the Boch family, as in Villeroy & Boch,

Rudolf Oetker, the German foodstuff billionaire, bought it

despite having never visited. The hotel – now part of the

Oetker Collection that includes Le Bristol in Paris – is

owned by his wife, Maja. It was she who oversaw the

massive restoration completed last spring.

It cost €45 million (about £37.5 million) and took four

years. The key word is restoration because all those euros

seem to have been spent not just on reviving the original

spirit of the place, but in a way that no one would notice.

It’s the first instance in my experience of anyone spending

so many millions to disguise the fact that they have. The

greatest risk in the whole exercise was that anyone should

think the hotel had changed. In the words of French writer

Anatole France, engraved on a plaque in the hotel garden:

Ce qui sera, c’est ce qui fut. “What will be, is what was.”

Hotel du Cap regulars, which is to say eight out of

10 guests, will notice some major differences. They could

hardly miss the reconstructed swimming pool and the

new terrace restaurant, which is reminiscent of the deck

of an ocean liner berthed at the very tip of Cap d’Antibes,

the hotel’s rocky and exclusive point.

In the guest rooms, now fewer and larger, the changes

are more subtle. There is new lighting round the

bathroom mirrors in hand-blown bubbles of glass, and

there are televisions. Ah, the televisions. I loved the hotel.

I loved the unpretentiousness of the staff, immaculate in

creaseless cream jackets; I loved the space and the light

and the fantasy of having emigrated to some gorgeous

realm totally disconnected from the anguished century

in which I live. I loved the cushioned pathways, on

either side of a sweep of grey gravel, that descend

through the garden to the sea. I loved the silence but for

the soft pop of tennis balls being hit. I loved the pines,

palms and lawns and the designer gulls that patrol

them. But the televisions…

The screen in my room had an aggressive black frame,

totally at odds with the rest of the decor, as pale and pure

as Keira Knightley’s complexion, splashed with Colefax

and Fowler fabrics. In fairness, the screen surrounds

were supposed to be white but they were never going to

be hidden. “Mrs Oetker is completely against television

cabinets,” said Philippe Perd, the hotel’s managing

director. “Actually, she is completely against television.”

They didn’t have televisions in the rooms before,

or hair-driers, or private bars. They didn’t take credit

cards either. They do now, though the private bars, one

senses, were adopted reluctantly. “If you want a glass of

champagne in a luxury hotel, there should be someone

to pour it,” insisted Monsieur Perd.

The only demand placed on guests is that they should

have some grounding in the nuances and potential of

these heights of service. In addition to room service,

the call buttons in the bedrooms give you the option

to summon either a valet de chambre and/or a femme

de chambre. The guests of the 19th century would have

understood the distinction. “What will be, is what was.”

The Hôtel du Cap-Eden-Roc (00 334 93 61 39 01,

hotel-du-cap-eden-roc.com) has rooms from ¤495

(about £400) per night and suites from ¤1,130 (about

£930) per night. Rates are roughly a third higher

during the Cannes Film Festival (festival-cannes.fr),

which this year takes place from May 16-27.

Cartoon characters Vellum sheets signed by

(top to bottom) Tim Burton, Grace Jones and Karl

Lagerfeld will eventually be bound into a book

Cannes do attitude Left to right: the Bar Bellini at the Hôtel du Cap; Jude Law, a guest at the hotel, departing in a launch; and Jennifer Lopez photographed on the steps of the hotel during a fundraising event in 2010

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EDITED BY LISA GRAINGER

5MARRAKECH SUITES

WITH GARDENS

La Mamounia Riad An 8,500sq ft

suite in the city’s oldest gardens, with

its own pool and three hand-crafted

bedrooms (£7,313, mamounia.com).

Four Seasons Royal Villa Four-

bedroom, 3,500sq ft contemporary,

cool riad with dining room for 12, and

private pool (£8,595, fourseasons.com).

Selman Riad Sharav Sumptuous,

6,000sq ft yellow and black

one-bedroom riad designed by

Jacques Garcia, with a private pool

(£1,235, selman-marrakech.com).

Royal Mansour Riad D’Honneur

Opulent, super-private semi-palace

built by – and for – the King of

Morocco (£25,703, royalmansour.com).

Amanjena Al-Hamra Maison

Serene, two-bedroom villa with

enormous living spaces and, outdoors,

two pavilions, a large pool and

fireplace (£2,087, amanresorts.com).

Pool Suites, Palais Namaskar MarrakechRoute de Bab Atlas, Syba (00 212 5 2429 9800, palaisnamaskar.com)

Opened April 2012

Price From £980 per night

Size 1,160sq ft

USP The calm. The water. The feeling of letting go. Palais Namaskar,

on the edge of the Palmeraie, between the Atlas Mountains and the

mysterious Djebilet Hills yet a 20-minute drive from central Marrakech,

has a palpable, almost intensely soothing effect on its guests. Set in

15 acres of emerald green, scented, Balinese-inspired gardens, four

acres of which comprise water – pools, channels, rills, waterfalls – its

41 discreet villas and suites are hardly visible amid the towering palms,

exotic foliage and bowers of white bougainvillea. There’s a long,

tranquil walkway leading to a sheet of shallow water crossed by stone

paths, a domed restaurant pavilion, a shadowy, seductive spa, in-house

yoga and a glamorous rooftop bar, sensational at sunset. The hotel was

designed by the Frenchman Philippe Soulier, who is a strong believer

in the principles of feng shui – hence there is a balance of wood, fire

(in every room), earth, metal and water. There are also glittering

Murano glass chandeliers, reflections of rippling water on walls and

ceilings, more than four miles of silk curtains and an entire floor

of crystals deemed to release positive energy.

THE DETAILS At first I worried that the minimalist uniformity of the

suites – mushroom and black curtains, subtly patterned carpets, wooden

furniture, metal lamps and light fittings – was unexciting, but their

harmonious simplicity and the repetition of decorative motifs throughout the

hotel really did help me unwind. Each of the six pool suites looks on to its

own heated pool, which itself is part of a larger lake framed by pillars and

Mughal arches. For extra privacy, billowing curtains can be drawn around

each pool. The suites have walled gardens, glass bathrooms surrounded

by greenery, large, airy lobbies and wood-burning fireplaces – as well as

overbearing televisions, the one jarring note, though they can be removed.

Service is unobtrusive and kind, as befits this serene hotel. Fiona Duncan

Ultratravel’s new guide to the world’s most sumptuous hotel rooms SUITE DREAMS

A PALACE WITHIN A PALAIS

Oasis of calm

A pool suite

(top) at Palais

Namaskar. Left: the

main swimming

pool, framed

by pillars and

Mughal arches

intelligenceULTRA

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Andrew Purvis,

Ultratravel’s bon

viveur, on what makes

him furious about

high-end restaurants

Having spent five years documenting, photographing and exploring the wild waters of

coastal and inland Britain (on his return from the rainforests of New Guinea in which he

was taken hostage), the water-mad explorer Daniel Start has spent the past three years

camping and swimming his way around France. The result of his aquatic voyage, Wild Swimming

France (£14.95, Wild Things Publishing), is a simple-to-use, easy-on-the-eye compilation of

photographs, maps, directions and tips, showing rivers, lakes and waterfalls where you can strip

off and swim, from the crater lakes of the Massif Central to the pools of Provence.

REALLY MINTED

The Hungarian jeweller

Janos Gabor Varga –

a former Somerset

cheesemaker – became so

obsessed with coins

during his travels around

Eastern Europe that he

started to make jewellery

from them. His Blind

Spot Jewellery now

amalgamates the prettiest

coins from his collection,

featuring myths, animals

and buildings, in

brooches and rings (from

£145, boticca.com)

RHUBARB, RHUBARB, RHUBARB

THE ATHOLL, EDINBURGH

USP In prime position on a Regency-style crescent, the former Edinburgh College of Domestic

Science has been converted into four of the city’s biggest – and, without doubt, most luxurious – serviced

suites, each with its own kitchen, and from one to three bedrooms, costing from £1,000

to £2,500 a night, plus food and wine.

Details No expense has been spared. The building’s

cavernous rooms have been transformed into four slick,

contemporary spaces by local interior designer Ian Smith.

He has overseen the immaculate restoration of the

cornicing, the hand-painted murals, the installation of

Philippe Starck fixtures and Italian tiling in bathrooms, and

the inclusion in Bulthaup kitchens of such treats as cheese

fridges, Christofle cutlery and Riedel glassware. As well as

a 24-hour butler-cum-concierge, guests have at their

disposal an Albert Roux-trained chef who turns Scottish

ingredients into delicious dishes from rabbit roulade to

lavender shortbread (01620 842144, theatholl.com).

HOT PROPERTY Apartments, villas and foreign homes of one’s own

Why bartenders haven’t

considered using rhubarb,

the unsung – but delicious –

vegetable, to flavour cocktails until

now is a mystery. Thankfully,

several enlightened mixologists

across the land have been

seduced by its distinctive, slightly

bitter taste to give their drinks an

unmistakably British, summery

flavour. Mark Hix’s new bar at

Belgraves hotel in Belgravia uses

early forced stems to flavour its

Vanilla and Rhubarb Bellinis, and

uses rhubarb-infused gin and

rhubarb syrup to create its

Rhubarb Ramos Gin Fizz.

The revamped Quilon does

a Passionate Cachaça, blending

Cachaça 51 with the juice of

passionfruit and rhubarb. Bart’s,

the speakeasy-style bar on Sloane

Avenue concocts a deliciously

titled Charleston Crumble, using

rhubarb purée and pomegranate

juice. Even Chase – the British-

manufactured vodka, recently

voted the best in the world – has

flavoured its latest potato vodka

with soft pink essence of rhubarb.

Why the comeback? Nick

Strangeway, who concocted the

cocktails for Mark Hix, says it is

not just a delicious seasonal spring

ingredient, but “something that

takes us all back to our childhood”.

FAUX POPULISM

At the Gilbert Scott in St Pancras, London,

Marcus Wareing once perfected a Bakewell tart

(£8) with the same “synthetic quality” as the

Mr Kipling version (£1.30 for six) remembered

from childhood. What is the point of that?

At Bar Boulud in Knightsbridge, Daniel Boulud

does a refined Big Mac for £11.75. Jamie

Oliver serves antipasti on a plank resting

on two tins of tomatoes. Pretentious, moi?

WINE STEALTH

Why, in upmarket restaurants, is the bottle

taken away as soon as a glass is poured – to

a side table (tantalisingly close, but forbidden)

or a room where the sommelier may be

decanting it into another bottle? Other dark

arts include topping up wine by the glass

without the diner’s consent, inflating the bill.

OVER-ATTENTIVE SERVICE

In China, I have slurped soup watched by

seven waitresses – and in grand French

restaurants, I have had a platoon in attendance.

When a friend asked where the ladies’ was at

La Bastide in Gordes, she was escorted there

by a waiter who stood outside until she had

finished. Just as annoying are staff who insist

on spreading the napkin in your lap or pushing

in your chair. I can do it on my own, thanks.

DECONSTRUCTION

Bouillabaisse is a wonderful dish, melding the

flavours of the Mediterranean. At La Chèvre

d’Or in Eze, I ate a deconstructed version:

a tiny spider crab, sea urchin and abalone,

served separately on a bed of (dyed) turquoise

sea salt. It missed the point. At Combal.Zero

in Turin, Davide Scabin has created zuppizza:

“liquid pizza”, with bread on top, tomato in the

middle and mozzarella at the bottom. It looks

like prawn crackers in a pool of unappetising

froth. Don’t mess with the margherita.

FOOD AS THEATRE

I don’t mind if the waiters are actors, but

I really don’t enjoy performing myself. At Noma

in Copenhagen, you are asked to cut your

venison with a hunting knife, cook your own

duck egg at the table (in a pan on a bed of

hay), and pick radishes from a pot filled with

hazelnut “soil”. Food and service are faultless,

making up for for the feeling of being forced to

play charades at your parents’ Christmas party.

CLOCHERIE

It’s hard not to smirk when the silver domes

come off, to a sharp intake of breath and an

imagined fanfare. The coolest cloche

is at Koffmann’s at The Berkeley hotel

in Knightsbridge – the real carapace of

a spider crab, with fresh crab underneath.

LOOK, NO PLATES

Eating bread off the table is fine, but try dipping

it in olive oil first, from a bowl in the middle of

the table. Expect a lightly drizzled table, chin –

and lap. A side plate would help, but crockery

is so passé. At Malabar in Lima, Peru, diners

eat off marble slabs that change with every

course; at Noma, the langoustine is presented

on a flat rock. Full marks to Yannick Franques

at Le St-Martin in Vence, who tells me he is on

a mission to bring back “beautiful tableware”.

LETTING OFF STEAM

Travel experts reveal their bugbears

85Hotels to be built by 2015

by the fast-growing contemporary-style

chain, Aloft

4Growth, in centimetres per year,

of Mount Everest – already 8,850m

10Depth, in centimetres, by

which Mexico City sinks each year – faster than Venice

109,000Chinese visitors to Britain in 2010 – between them they spent £184 million

TRAVEL BY NUMBERS

20,000 Black rhinos in Kenya 30 years ago; today there are 400. Most

poached rhino horns go to one country – China

THE TREND

THE BOOK

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CABS AND CAR CLUBS

Zipcar (free)

Allows Zipcar members, in the US and

the UK, to locate cars, make and cancel

reservations and even unlock the doors.

Autolib (free)

Lets users of the Parisian electric-car

club find Autolib stations, check for cars

and plan trips and stop-offs to recharge.

Uber (free)

Enables members of Uber in the US to

request a chauffered private car, tell

them how far away it is and after the

trip, charge their credit card.

CROWNING MOMENTS

Hats off to the Berkeley hotel, which has

turned (not altogether delectable) millinery

designs for British Royalty into rather more

appealing cakes. Its celebratory

Jubilee tea, featuring edible

headgear from crowns

to Princess Beatrice’s

fascinator, will be served

from May 29 to June 9,

and costs £39 a head

(the-berkeley.co.uk).

IT’S A CHANGING WORLD

In search of the best...

TANZANIAN CRAFTSArusha is known for its traffic rather than its

shopping. But outside the city

centre, opposite a tea plantation, is

a shop worth a detour. Shanga

was set up by Saskia

Rechsteiner, a Swiss-born

local, who first made jewellery

from her children’s marbles.

Today it sells some of the

most stylish crafts, jewellery

and homewares in Africa –

mostly made by disabled

craftspeople trained by Rechsteiner. Equally appealing

is Shanga’s thatched restaurant – by far the best

place to lunch if you are en route to the airstrip for

a safari. Shanga Shangaa, Burka Coffee Estate,

Dodoma Road, Arusha (00 255 689 759 067,

shanga.org). To buy in the UK, see kaskazi.org.uk.

MY OTHER OFFICE IS AN AIRBUSThe world’s first walk-in corporate aviation showroom

has opened – in a full-sized mock-up of an Airbus 319,

in Knightsbridge. Steve Varsano, who owns The Jet

Business (thejetbusiness.com), says that, while

demand at the £1 million mark has fallen, buyers from

countries such as Brazil and Russia are snapping up

larger planes (think £30 million). No jet at all? No

problem. Members of flyvictor.com can buy seats on

private jets with spare capacity. Clive Jackson, Victor’s

CEO, says: “We are proving that those who fly by

private jet are willing to share and no longer willing to

pay over the odds” (flyvictor.com).

EXTREME WINE BOOT CAMP

Serious wine buffs can join a new boot camp at

La Verrière, a wine estate and restored ninth-century

priory owned by Xavier Rolet, chief executive of the

London Stock Exchange, and his wife, Nicole. The

course is tutored by wine masters Clive Barlow and

Nick Dumergue and includes trips to wineries at

Châteauneuf-du-Pape and Gigondas. The six days of

tastings, gourmet meal pairings, lessons in how to

stock and manage a cellar, and WSET Level 2 exam

costs from £4,200 per person (laverriere.com).

SOUVENIR HUNT

SUPERYACHTS

THIS YEAR, 55 SUPERYACHTS HAVE BEEN SOLD, FOR A TOTAL OF £350 MILLION. IN ADDITION, 15 HAVE BEEN ORDERED (ONE, FOR A GERMAN CLIENT, A STAGGERING 480FT LONG AND POWERED BY

SAILS), 15 HAVE BEEN DELIVERED (ONE, 300FT IN LENGTH, TO THE UK) AND 34 LAUNCHED. THE MOST EXPENSIVE, THE 188FT EXCELLENCE III, COST £30 MILLION, EQUATING TO £160,000 A FOOT.

THIS YEAR, ONE YACHT HAS SUNK: THE 200FT YOGI, NOW 1,600FT DOWN OFF SKYROS. THE MOST BLING? DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER, A RIOT OF GOLD AND MARBLE, FOR CHARTER AT £270,000 A WEEK

1SCANDINAVIAN FIXER

Few Nordic specialists can

offer access to palaces, igloos

and aristocrats’ estates as well as

diving with whales and picnics on

a glacier. Which is why Malmo-

based Luxury Beyond, headed by

Orit Feldman-Dahlgren, has

become the go-to company for

extraordinary experiences in

Scandinavia. The Swede knows

her territory inside-out, and has

at her fingertips a who’s who of

chefs, adventurers and villa

owners to create bespoke trips.

A day trip by plane to the Arctic

Circle for caviar and blinis?

A week on a superyacht, calling

at islands for Michelin-starred

meals? Or just a sleigh ride by

reindeer, with freshly smoked

salmon for tea? No problem (00

46 40 26 066, luxurybeyond.com).

2HIP HOTEL FOR £99

As a stockbroker who spent

his life travelling, Robin Chadha

was no newcomer to business

hotels. “They were never

perfect – formal and expensive,

where you paid for Wi-Fi and

could only get breakfast from

8am to 10am, or uncomfortable

and cheap,” he says. Hence the

birth in 2008 of his first Citizen

M hotel, near Amsterdam airport,

followed by Amsterdam city,

Glasgow and, this July, London,

wrapped in an artwork by Turner-

nominated Mark Titchner. Chadha

aims to deliver, for £99 to £199,

“the luxuries people want”: Frette

sheets, beautiful-smelling

bathroom products and a strong

rain-shower, free Wi-Fi and

movies, a 24-hour restaurant, and

self-check-in and check-out. “Yes,

our bedrooms are small – but our

living rooms are comfy, with good

art and books, our restaurants

a blend of cocktail bar, barista bar

and upmarket Pret, and our

business rooms inspire you to be

creative. We want to do for hotels

what Apple did for computers.”

Enterprise clearly runs in the

family – Chadha’s father set up

the clothing giant Mexx. In the

next few years, Citizen M will

come to Paris, New York and

Rotterdam (citizenm.com).

3DESERT BY AIR

Visitors to Morocco who

would like to visit the desert but

do not fancy the nine-hour drive

over the Atlas Mountains can

now go by plane or helicopter.

Heliconia Aero Solutions offers

trips to the mountains and desert

dunes, from 15-minute flights to

full day trips to Zagora. From

€5,500 (£4,800) for up to six

people (00 212 661 782 160,

heliconia-maroc.com).

TAKING OFF

3 NEW WAYS TO TRAVEL IN LUXURY

Camel replacement The new way

to get to the Sahara from Marrakech

TASTE TEST

THE EVENT

ULTRA APPS

The beach at Palm Island

Check in, then switch off. Welcome to the ultimate island escape

From the moment you touch down

in St. Vincent and the Grenadines,

you’ll feel like you’re a million miles

from ordinary. Nestling in the warm waters

of the Caribbean Sea, these 32 islands and

cays known locally as SVG, offer a truly

authentic, unspoiled slice of Caribbean life.

Just a short hop from Barbados, Antigua

or St. Lucia the islands are uncrowded,

unhurried and play host to a rich local

culture untainted by mass tourism.

When it comes to tranquillity and

escapism nowhere beats this diminutive

country, covering just 150 square miles

of sparkling blue sea. With 9 inhabited

islands – St. Vincent, Young Island,

Bequia, Mustique, Canouan, Mayreau,

Union Island, Palm Island and Petit St.

Vincent – SVG packs a punch when it

comes to diversity. Its unique cultural

blend, coupled with the variety of

experiences on offer really helps it to

stand apart.

Vibrant St. Vincent, the largest island in

the country and crowned by the mighty

La Soufriere volcano is an ecotourist’s

paradise, while The Grenadines with

their white beaches and azure-blue seas

ooze scenery which is postcard-perfect.

Scratch the surface a little and you’ll

discover that each island has its own

ambience, character and many reasons to

keep coming back.

Checking in to SVG provides the

opportunity to check out of the hum

drum of daily life. This is a place for

slowing down, recharging batteries and

re-discovering the simple pleasures

in life. Now for the first time, visitors

to the islands have the opportunity to

experience a Digital Detox – like a health

detox, but for your mind - a complete

unplugging from the world, designed

to wean guests off their technology.

A number of the hotels in the destination

have no televisions in the rooms and

technology is discouraged on the beaches.

Coupled with the feeling of finding your

own Robinson Crusoe style island –

there is no better place for the ultimate

Digital Detox.

Call 020 7751 0660

Email escapes@caribtours.co.uk

or visit www.caribtours.co.uk.

For more information on

St. Vincent and the Grenadines

visit www.discoversvg.com.

Book your Digital Detox in St. Vincent and the Grenadines

Specialising in tailor-made holidays

to the Caribbean, Caribtours offer a

Digital Detox holiday to SVG which

includes a guide to ‘de-teching’ and a

session with a life coach. Those who

have less self-discipline but deeper

pockets can take the lifecoach with

them for daily counselling sessions

and to guide and support them

through the process.

© www.insandoutsofsvg.com

ADVERTISEMENT FEATURE

Tobago Cays Marine Park

Kingstown market, St. Vincent

���LCKI8KI8M<C�

ith a mother whose

maiden name was Moon, Buzz Aldrin seemed

destined to travel there. On July 20, 1969, he and

Neil Armstrong became the first men in history to

walk on the lunar surface. Aldrin has since been

immortalised as an MTV statuette (the “Buzzy”),

had a Disney character named in his honour and

recorded a song with the hip-hop artist Snoop

Dogg. Recently he was awarded the congressional

gold medal, the highest civilian honour in the

United States, along with his fellow Apollo 11 crew

members and the astronaut John Glenn. Now

aged 82, Aldrin remains a passionate advocate

of manned space flight and travels the world for

speaking engagements as well as for pleasure.

How often do you travel?

I fly at least once a week – and it’s a rare week

when I’m not away for two or three days.

What’s next on the horizon?

London this summer, for the Olympics.

Which is your favourite London hotel?

I’ve spent a lot of time at Claridge’s in Mayfair;

I love its formality, sophistication and refinement.

I also like Brown’s Hotel, in Albemarle Street.

And your favourite airline?

American Airlines – though it’s a shame they’re

in a little financial trouble right now. When I get

on one of their planes, I walk up to the front and

introduce myself to the pilot and co-pilot; they

kind of like having me on board. Emirates, Etihad

Airways and Singapore Airlines are good, too. I fly

up front where there’s a degree of privacy and

I don’t have to sit upright when it’s time to sleep.

Your most impressive travel itinerary?

When we came back from the moon in 1969, we

did a round-the-world trip in 45 days. That was

intense, but it’s something I haven’t forgotten.

Where have you been recently?

I was skiing up in Denver with my youngest son,

Andy, a couple of months ago. It’s something

I didn’t take up until I was in my fifties, but I’m

good enough now to go through the competitive

gates. At 82, though, I’m a lot more cautious than

I used to be. Sun Valley, Idaho, is another favourite.

It’s really relaxing there, very gentle and laid-back.

Apart from the moon, what is the most

remote place you have been?

I went to the North Pole once, aboard a Russian

ice-breaker, which was certainly off the beaten

track. I’ve also been on a National Geographic

cruise to the Antarctic, where I saw lots of

penguins and seals. There were scuba divers

exploring underwater, too, but I didn’t join them.

Where, on your earthly travels, have you felt

the “magnificent desolation” of the moon?

Around the islands of the Arctic, with all the birds,

icebergs and glaciers. They’re majestic, not very

habitable for humans and therefore untouched.

What about that feeling of weightlessness?

Scuba diving comes pretty close. It’s the freedom

you have to go up and down, like in space – but

in space, you rely upon an engine and wings and

rocket fuel to get you there. Underwater, you are

your own boss and you can control everything.

Where did you first go scuba diving?

It was off the coast of Tripoli, in Libya, after the

Korean War – which ended in 1953. I fell in love

with the sport immediately. The next chance

I had, I bought a tank and a regulator and

my first wife and I went diving off Majorca.

Which are your favourite places to dive?

The Cayman Islands, and Bonaire in the Dutch

Antilles. There are plenty of beautiful places to

dive in the Pacific, too, such as Hawaii, Palau and

the Marshall Islands, including Kwajalein Atoll.

One of my most memorable dives was in the Gulf

of Aqaba, east of the Sinai Peninsula in Egypt. It

was with Sylvia Earle, an early pioneer of diving.

We happened to get involved in some underwater

scenes for the James Bond film For Your Eyes

Only. It was impressive to see how they got the

sharks in the right place for the cameras.

Do you do any other water sports?

I learned to bodysurf in the ocean when I was

very young, but I never really got into surfboards

or windsurfing. I’ve given both of them a try –

but if I’m honest, I find them a little challenging.

Do you have a favourite city?

They’re all a bit intimidating to me and I’m not into

tall buildings. Since becoming a bit of a celebrity,

I don’t have quite the same freedom to go into

places and just look around, though it helps if

I’m with somebody who knows the city well.

But if you had to choose…?

I was recently in Bangkok and I found the different

temples intriguing but the city still seemed like

it was full of traffic and there were wires draped

across the streets. I’m more into open spaces,

I guess. That’s why I look forward to visiting

Australia – where I especially like to dive the

Great Barrier Reef, of course – and New Zealand.

You’ve certainly travelled widely. Is there

any place on Earth that you haven’t been?

Bali in Indonesia, though I hope to go in the near

future. I know someone associated with some

resorts there and I’ve heard the diving is fantastic.

Is space the next big travel destination?

I’m sure we will see temporary residences, hotels

if you like, in orbit in 10 to 15 years. They will be

sparse, but the main attractions will be the view

out of the window and the freedom of floating.

Travelling in space is inherently risky. What

challenges will commercial companies face?

They will have to have very high safety standards,

for sure. Their first customer is likely to be Nasa,

which will need a service like this to take people

up to the International Space Station. It’s hard to

understand how we could have been flying the

Shuttle for 30 years and not have a replacement

lined up for it. Right now, we have to rely on

Russia to take us into space, which is deplorable.

You did some zero-gravity flights in your

seventies. Is returning to space your goal?

I’m more interested in getting ordinary people

there, because that will spread an appreciation of

what space is. It would be anti-climactic, anyway,

having been to the moon already. I prefer to stand

as a role model and a symbol of exploration.

Wherever you travel, the moon is a constant

companion. What does it mean to you?

I look up and think, “We did it”. Apollo was clearly

a response to the threat of communism after

the Second World War. However, it was also

a response to a challenge that had existed ever

since man began to look up and wonder at the

objects in the night sky. That makes me proud.

Dr Buzz Aldrin was talking at an event at Soneva

Kiri by Six Senses, in Thailand. For details of

forthcoming speakers, see sixsenses.com.

Interview by Caroline Shearing

TRAVELLING LIFE Buzz Aldrin

ALA

MY

The former astronaut on Mayfair hotels, Arctic adventures and why scuba diving is the closest thing to moonwalking

‘On a plane, I walk up to the front and introduce myself to

the pilot; he kind of likes having me on board’W

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