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Four Seasons Georges V Hotel, Paris

Get Memorable Hotels At Enviable Rates

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Contrary to popular thinking, the best rate for a room in a high-style hotel isn’t always the one found online.

Four Seasons Georges V Hotel, Paris

 

TRAVEL ADVISORY | Many people we know who stay in memorable hotels for enviable rates direct dial the reservation desk at the actual property they want to visit. They do not book online or through off-site call centres where the wiggle room on rates may be minimal. Before dialling direct, they check hotel’s current rates, what Internet-based travel reservation websites (Expedia, Orbitz, et al) are showing and what rates the hotel’s direct competition is charging. Read more

sliding house-nova scotia

Out Of The Ordinary Vacation Rentals

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This curated catalog of VRBO (vacation rentals by owner) is an invaluable resource for chic nomads wanting cool places to hide and play.

sliding house-nova scotia

 

TRAVEL ADVISORY | If you are a great fan of architecture and interior design and want to stay somewhere visually interesting when you travel, you’re going to love boutique-homes.com, a website that features a collection of thoughtfully designed accommodations (both private homes and wee hotels) that you can rent around the globe for a wide range of prices.

“Temporary housing for the incurably stylish nomad” is how Californians Heinz Legler and Veronique Lievre describe their curated cache of creative digs—everything from a trailer in Texas to a palace in Italy—which you can view and book online. The couple’s handpicked assortment of VRBO (vacation rentals by owner) is a testament to their impeccable taste and investigative eyes.

CLICK THROUGH to see a few of the awesome lodgings they’ve discovered both near and far away. You’ll want to start packing now. We know we do.—Eds Read more

Roma dress - Icebreaker

Icbreaker’s Roma Is The Ultimate LBD

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The perfect little black dress will take you from dawn to dusk, office to dinner—oh yes, and even around the world.

Roma dress - Icebreaker

 

BUY RIGHT | The perfect little black dress is to women what a well-tailored suit is to men: a garment that works in a range of situations. And the most perfect little black dress of all may be the Roma wrap dress from Icebreaker. Read more

Big Sur Highway - Irven Rule

When Nature Calls Big Sur Is The Place To Be

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Jump into the wild by cruising Big Sur, one of the all-time great North American road trips.

Big Sur Highway - Irven RuleTRAVEL ADVISORY | Want to drop off the planet for a few days, ditch the cellphone, skip the Starbucks, take a break from recreational shopping? One of California’s most beautiful and elemental places to get away from everything urban in the fall is Big Sur on the central coast. Big Sur isn’t an exact spot on the map, it’s a road trip: 90 miles of two-lane blacktop that zigzag around the edge of the wind-wracked headlands of the Santa Lucia Mountains mere yards, it seems, before they nose-dive into the Pacific Ocean. Cruising along this jagged, Amalfi-like coastline is—to borrow words from hippie vernacular—a mind-blowing head-trip. It’s impossible not to feel spiritual or to reflect on your place in the cosmos when a natural setting this powerful is shoving itself in your face. Read more

Pueblo Ingles

How To Stay Free At Resorts In Rural Spain

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Wanted: English speakers to stay for free at resorts in the Spanish countryside.

Pueblo Ingles TRAVEL ADVISORY | Are you friendly, flexible and fluent in English? Then for the price of a plane ticket to Madrid, you can spend eight days but zero money at a four-star resort in rural Spain. Pueblo Ingles, meaning English Village, is an organization in Spain that allows Spanish speakers to interact with English speakers. Instead of cash, you exchange your life experience, stories and patience with learners for luxurious accommodation, exquisite meals and a lounge chair by a pool. The Spanish speakers get to practise speaking real or “raw” English, as the program likes to call it, in a totally English environment; not even a “hola” allowed. Read more

The Cheapest Chicest Hotels in Palm Springs

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If you can take some heat, this California city is a great place to get a room right now.

 

 

Colony Palms Hotel, Palm Springs

STAY HERE There are two schools of thought on travel accom-modation. There is the group who say: a bed is a bed and all I need is somewhere clean to lay my head because I don’t plan to spend time in my room anyway; and there is the other group who feel that where they stay should be memorable in the way it looks or contributes to the place’s overall experience.

I understand both these points of view and have fallen into one or the other of these groups depending on the occasion. But I do love design—and the idea of regionality where hotels are concerned—so I’m always on the lookout for accommodation with what I call original spin, hotels that “have a look” and feel local. Oh yes, and I want them to give great service AND be reasonably priced. Read more