Inspections
A few of the rooms I have slept in.
Every one of these is a hotel I have slept in, photographed myself and written up afterwards. They are a small part of the ground this site covers: there are many more places in the photographs on Independents than there are pieces about them, and these are the ones I have had the time to do properly. Five notes from each stay are public. The rest goes to the people who travel with me.
Dolomites, South Tyrol, Italy
FORESTIS
A mountain retreat where the setting shapes the entire stay.
Rome, Italy
Orient Express La Minerva
The old Hotel de la Minerve under a new name, with the Pantheon on one side of the roof and half of Rome on the other.
Livadia, Antiparos, Greece
The Rooster
Sixteen stone cottages up a valley above Livadia Bay, reached by a dirt road with one sign on it. The only house on this site I have been back to four summers.
Higashiyama, Kyoto, Japan
Park Hyatt Kyoto
A guesthouse on the hill above Higashiyama, and the only sane way to have that district to yourself.
Madrid, Spain
Four Seasons Madrid
A building on Alcalá that comes to a point like a prow, and a pool under glass that most guests never find.
Adelboden, Bernese Oberland, Switzerland
The Brecon
A Welsh family's house in Adelboden, adults only, where the champagne is yours to pour and no room has a television.
Ashar Valley, AlUla, Saudi Arabia
Habitas AlUla
A camp of tented villas on the floor of a sandstone canyon in the north west of Saudi Arabia, where the rock does most of the work and the house has the sense to let it.
Kasbah, Marrakech, Morocco
La Sultana Marrakech
Four riads joined into one house inside the walls of the Kasbah, two minutes from the Saadian Tombs, where the day outside is loud and the day inside is not.
Huvadhoo Atoll, Maldives
Park Hyatt Maldives Hadahaa
An island with nothing on the horizon, fifty kilometres north of the equator.
Melides, Alentejo, Portugal
Vermelho
Christian Louboutin's house in an Alentejo village, thirteen rooms and no two of them alike, where the red in the name is a promise the building keeps.
Vouliagmeni, Athens Riviera, Greece
Four Seasons Astir Palace
A pine peninsula half an hour from the Acropolis, where the city stops and the sea begins.
San José del Cabo, Mexico
Viceroy Los Cabos
White blocks standing in black water on the Sea of Cortez, by Miguel Ángel Aragonés, with three kitchens in it that do three different jobs.