“Caroline Phillips is a tenacious and skilful writer with a flair for high quality interviewing and a knack for making things work.”
If you want to zzzz in a 12th-century former nobleman’s castle – set in 740 tranquil acres of rolling hills – then try Castello del Nero’s new Sleep Retreat created with ESPA. Bag a suite with Pompeian-style, 18th-century frescoes and let the butler draw you a steaming, essence-infused bath strewn with rose petals.
I am lying on a wooden massage bed as two women rub my naked body with hot pouches of cooked rice, milk and medicinal herbs. They massage in tandem my legs, hip joints and up to my neck. A little gloop escapes the poultice bags each time and soon my body is covered with a gluey white residue. This is navarakizhi, a treatment claimed to reduce joint stiffness and relieve depression.
I’m at Soukya, a health retreat outside Bangalore that offers traditional Indian cures for conditions from hay fever to diabetes and strives to “restore the natural balance of your mind, body and spirit”.
Imagine a palm-fringed beachfront retreat. An 8,500 sq/ft tropical villa built in 2005. One boasting a massage temple – with sides open to the jungle foliage – and a colonnaded walkway. An outside sitting room with a chandelier and a 49ft dining room overlooking monkeys swinging in the Khomba tree and the courtyard swimming pool. Add to this six colonial bedrooms with soaring ceilings and inside/outside bathrooms open to the fireflies that sparkle in the inky sky.
All the best trips involve the possibility of dying. The first time this occurs to me is when three soldiers cock their rifles at us outside our hotel in Ataco, El Salvador. (It transpires that the hotel is opposite an army communications mast.) On another occasion, we’re accompanied on a sightseeing trip to Conchagua volcano by two policemen with guns: a precaution because machete-wielding locals once mugged some tourists.
It would be hard to get closer to the sea without being on a boat. Spyglass is a bijou erstwhile fisherman’s cottage which was once part of a fort – all whitewashed outside and shabby chic maritime inside. It’s reached along the tiniest pedestrian-nly lane, by iPhone torch if you’re late (which the kids will love).
Florence, cradle of the Italian Renaissance and the place where Leonardo and Michelangelo worked, packs more beauty per millimetre than any other city. There’s something gasp-worthy wherever you go, from architecture to 15th-century frescoes, bas-reliefs and al fresco statues. Plus there are cobbled streets with botteghe (artisanal workshops), piazzas for relaxing with a cappuccino or a glass of Brunello di Montalcino, trattorias for ribollita (traditional bread soup) and (thankfully, given the crowds) a pedestrianised central zone. And then there’s all that Gucci and Dolce & Gabbana that just has to be bought.
Amsterdam may conjure visions of wayward stag parties, slow living and windmill peripheries but the city is fast becoming the creative hub of Europe, a marked return to its golden age of merchant prosperity and artistic flair…
The reopening of the Stedelijk, Van Gogh and infamous Rijksmuseum after years of renovations are testament to this, as are a host of new design-led hotels, restaurants and bars.
It’s not too late to book these British boltholes for May half-term. From a set of converted barns in Norfolk to the manor where the Gunpowder Plot was hatched, find your dream destination here.
High-end luxury has yet to make a big inroad in Ethiopia. Outside of Addis Ababa, you may get patchy Wi-Fi (the government tends to switch the internet off from time to time), bumpy rides and restaurants where many of the choices on the menu are unavailable. But don’t let this deter you. This is perhaps the most intriguing country in Africa. A place of scale, biblical beauty, canyons and chasms. Of historical treasures aplenty. And, above all, of a colourful, gracious and welcoming people. So here are some of the fabulous options for a trip there, many of which are hidden secrets that you won’t find with an internet search, because they don’t have a website.
Coco Chanel, who never had a good word for anyone, called Cristobal Balenciaga ‘the only couturier in the truest sense of the word. The others are simply fashion designers.’
There are people who have created global businesses after doing it. Others who have seen their profits leap after attending a seminar. FTSE 100 companies that swear by its approach.
‘The first thing I want to do is get rid of this mystique,’ says Barry Webb, an English scholar and former Oxbridge admissions tutor, as he kicks off the first session of a three-day intensive residential course for Oxbridge interview preparation with a talk about what our interviewers will be looking for.
Facialogy? What’s that? It’s a combo of a blissful Vaishaly Signature Facial with a relaxing, health-promoting reflexology.
I am lying on a wooden massage bed as two women rub my naked body with hot pouches of cooked rice, milk and medicinal herbs.…
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