Unless you’re going by private Lear jet, hot-air balloon or in First Class, there can’t be a better way to fly to New York than aboard the Bankers’ Express, BA001. Launched last September, it’s the Club World only service that avoids the US immigration queues by stopping briefly in Shannon, Ireland to complete the fierce US formalities and to refuel.

There’s almost enough space on board the plane to play baseball – 32 flat-bed seats (but room for 100 ordinary seats); decent enough food of the asparagus and port reduction drizzle variety; fabulous service (when I flew, if there had been one more passenger we’d have outnumbered the crew); and a cute mobile phone icon which tells you when you may contact Earth.

I powered my laptop, pressed a buzzer for help which arrived within a nanosecond and used enough hot towels to open a Chinese restaurant. Then, seemingly moments later, we touched down at JFK’s domestic airport. Perhaps uniquely for a commercial carrier, I was the only person on the flight with checked-in baggage (is there a social stigma attached to being the only loser who has enough spare time to wait to retrieve checked luggage?).

Next we test drove the Farrell limousine service. This is one of New York’s most expensive car companies, offering a service that is beloved of discreet celebrities, private money and families into their fourth generation of Farrell hire. They have gleaming clean sedans, stretchers and formals, plus vans for the Louis Vuitton and professional-beyond-professional, always-early, often multilingual drivers. (‘It’s the best limo service in Manhattan,’ says The Mark Hotel’s general manager, James Sherwin, sitting later in his office among gratefully signed photos from British royals and Very Important People.)

Our first stop is The Mark, the 1923 über-chic Upper East Side hotel with 100 rooms and 50 suites. It’s fresh from a $150 million refit by Jacques Grange – who boasts the Légion d’honneur and is decorator to Princess Caroline and formerly to Yves Saint Laurent – and reopened in August 2009. It’s more like an impressive contemporary gallery than a hotel, but a gallery where your every need and whim is tended to by an impeccable staff. In this ‘gallery’, renowned designers from Paul Mathieu to Vladimir Kagan have created one-off pieces for the playful ground-floor rooms.

The lobby has a jazzy black and white marble floor and ‘Ge-Off Sphere’ Ron Arad pendant light; there is a witty, cloud-shaped bar by Guy de Rougemont and a herd of pony-skin sofas and bespoke geometric carpet; the restaurant has upholstered bar stools and free standing curved banquettes; and upstairs is a more muted kind of chic. Every time you look there seems to be another well-known face being welcomed by the hotel’s Turnbull & Asser clad staff. Oh look, that’s Woody Allen. And there’s Barbara Walters.

We’re just one block from Central Park (think passing hounds fresh from shampoo and set, with Tina Turneresque accessories and private roof gardens on which to cock their pretty legs) and at the centre of the civilised world, near the Met, the Frick, the Guggenheim and the Whitney. But it’s our elder daughter Anya’s first time in NY and (aside from the sartorial hell-hole that is Abercrombie & Fitch, with its torso-baring shop assistants and Glastonbury-decibel music) Harlem is high on her to-do list.

We sightsee in a Farrell Cadillac stretch, driving around the new look Harlem-meets-Zurich – the former black spot polished up by Rudy Giuliani with his hit squads and now full of smiling policemen thanks to Michael Bloomberg and moved into by Bill Clinton with his office. We pass a bright yellow ‘Sidewalk Sunday School’ van wreathed in balloons: God has moved in mysterious ways to replace the burned-out cars of yesteryear. Then we drive past Sylvia’s Restaurant where the politicians hang out for soul food of pigs’ trotters and gizzards, and which has now become a global food brand.

Back on the Upper East Side we lunch at The Wright, the Guggenheim’s recently opened arty restaurant with an iconic Frank Lloyd Wright museum attached. It’s in a sleek white-on-white space – designed by Andre Kikoski, a leading new-garde architect – with curvilinear walnut walls and a layered white ceiling that echoes the original corkscrew building.

It serves modern American (seasonal, local and sustainable) food cooked by ex David Bouley chef, Rodolfo Contreras. Its 58 seats and communal table are packed. Think signature dishes like green market vegetables with slowly cooked egg and truffle and Michelin-style presentation. I don’t get the benefit of cooking an egg slowly but, hey, the food passes muster.

After lunch it’s time to test drive another car company, Jeff Kaplan’s E-Z Ryder. It’s the favourite of in-the-know Lady Cosima Somerset of Concierge London and NYC fame. (An erstwhile friend of Princess Di and niece of Lady Annabel Goldsmith, Lady Cosima knows how to pick classy wheels.) Outside a big sign in the window of a four-wheel drive reads ‘E-Z Ryder Welcomes Caroline’. E-Z Ryder is a small, family-run business, with its cars with blacked-out windows, and another celebrity car firm of choice.

We do a lifetime of shopping and our accommodating driver seems never to tire of circling the block to avoid parking restrictions. We visit the sort of adolescent must-see emporiums that would exhaust you just wading through their names on a list. Meanwhile E-Z Ryder is a teen dream with its armrest full of candies and gums. And as the parcels and packages pile up, we use the car as a luggage depot. (There’s little better than going shopping with a driver.)

So which shops to recommend? Abercrombie, American Apparel and Victoria’s Secret be damned. My personal favourite and top of the (non-adolescent) list isBellhaus, the new lifestyle store aimed at the working woman and fashionable man. It’s Dover Street Market meets, er, Beach in the City. It sells ready-to-wear (including many American designers) plus accessories, candles, beauty, eye wear, Kilian fragrances, vintage pieces (up to $38,000) and Carlos Falchi daytime totes for $220.

Afterwards we have a sunset hour drink in Andre Balazs’ Boom Boom room at The Standard hotel. With its floor-to-ceiling windows (including in the loo) it enjoys spectacular views up the Hudson River. It’s a gawpingly great room 18 floors above the Meatpacking District with Art Deco-meets-contemporary features. A wannabe Studio 54, it has guest-list only pretensions, waitresses in skimpy dresses, a black-tiled room with triangular soaking tub, vertiginous glass-floored smoking terraces and hype to match.

In the evening, we return to The Mark. At this hour, slinky women in Christian Louboutin heels and fitted faces sit in the bar at low-flying cloud tables. Nearby, dapper men stand with practiced smiles and sky-scraper-deep pockets. As they follow their social X-rays into dinner in The Mark Restaurant by Jean-Georges (Vongerichten), we return to our suite: to a soothing place of custom-made furniture and black and white marble Art Deco bathroom. I could happily stay here for days longer. And just then we hear news of the eruption of the Icelandic volcano. We couldn’t have planned it better…

Part One: Getting there, staying there, getting about

FLIGHTS
I swoosh out of my cab at City Airport – just a brave 25 minutes before departure – and BA Man spirits my bags to the check-in desk. I saunter down gloriously deserted corridors to the gate-cum-makeshift departure lounge. This is my sky-test of the ‘Bankers’ Express’, BA 001. We’re on the BA Club World service from London City to JFK, the business-only flight in the Airbus with 32 flat-bed seats.

Just four other passengers are on my flight – all businessmen – plus purser, two flight attendants and dual pilots. One more passenger and we’d outnumber the crew. (Now that’s a carbon footprint.) I have front-row seats – each with adjustable headrest, privacy screen and personal media player, plus OnAir, the pioneering in-flight communication system for text, email and web (but no in-flight calls and phones on vibrate, please.)

It may be a journey time of 9 hours 25 minutes and a minimum fare of £2,102 one way, but it’s useful to have BlackBerry contact with earthlings from above the clouds (when the cute mobile phone icon is switched off after 10,000 feet). The Airbus is also pleasingly spacious – the A318 can actually fit 100 seats. There’s no muzak, endless hot flannels and reasonable food developed by the Borough Market restaurant Roast. A nanosecond after I lie down, the attendant closes my blinds. The service is fantastically attentive.

The other great thing is the US immigration dodge. After landing at Shannon, Ireland, citizens of Club World pass through US authorities in a heartbeat – then breeze off the flight at JFK as domestic passengers. Supposedly. As our A318 refuels, US Customs process my baggage: the only passenger’s bags in the hold. My hand-luggage-only co-travellers head past smugly with their wheelie-trolleys. Then US immigration officials interrogate only me. Fiercely. 45 minutes later, we re-board, still on schedule.

Overall it’s a glorious experience. Like being on a private jet, albeit with strangers. BA 001 hasn’t just taken Concorde’s flight number: for moneyed Canary Wharfers and high-end leisure travellers, it could take its place either as the business flight of choice – or on the aeronautical scrap heap, in these troubled economic times. I should have savoured being the only person collecting luggage off the carousel. Sadly my return flight is cancelled because of The Ash. Call that a one-way ticket to the blues.

ba.com

Fares for the double-daily service start from £2,102 (including all taxes and charges). Two uniquely configured Airbus A318s fly twice daily on the new route, which links the hearts of the world’s two biggest financial centres.

HOTELS
BEST FOR STYLE
The Mark is the only place for the UHNWs to stay. Hyperbole? OK, let’s say it’s one of them. I lodged here four times in its previous incarnation, when the décor was stuffy. Now the Upper East Side hotel – just a block from Central Park – has undergone radical surgery (a snip at $150 million), and resurfaced looking decades younger, bold, toned and chic.

The man who wielded the scalpel so stylishly was Jacques Grange, the French design star who has worked for Yves Saint Laurent and Caroline of Monaco. The playful lobby has a geometric black and white floor and – wow! – one-off contemporary pieces, including a swirling Ron Arad lamp and Mattia Bonetti bench. Its nightclub-style bar boasts low-slung pony-skin chairs and a witty metal cloud-shaped bar by Guy de Rougemont.

Visual high-kicks aside, there’s The Mark Restaurant by Jean-Georges (as in Vongerichten). Its mostly European menu lures Barbara Walters five days a week and Fergie, Paul McCartney and Woody Allen (but less often than Babs). In Willie Wonka-style, I try their five zingy, colourful home-made sodas – simultaneously – then order a dish that’s not on the menu. Successfully. Nothing is too much trouble – and they offer 24 hour room service.

I did my best to find something wrong with The Mark. Anything. But everything gets top marks. Which is (along with the John Lobb complimentary shoe shining service, eye-candy Turnbull & Asser staff outfits and Frederic Fekkai salon) why The Mark is great for long-term stays.

‘People move in during divorce, decoration and relocation.’ Thus speaks genius general manager, James Sherwin, the Mark Birley of New York. (He came via The Savoy and ten years at The Carlyle.) The Mark has 100 rooms and 50 suites with coffered ceilings, drive-in marble bathrooms, bespoke carpets, custom-designed furniture and everything that’s fine – from Quagliotti linens to Crestron touch controls and Boffi kitchens.

I became a delighted long-term resident when the Icelandic volcano erupted. But, annoyingly, the Concierge turned into a five star travel agent.

27 East 77th Street at Madison, New York NY 10075
Tel: 212.744.4300
www.themarkhotel.com
Rooms from $825 and suites from $1590. Preferential rates offered for long stays.

BEST FOR SPA
The best thing about our Greenwich Hotel bedroom is the huge complimentary basket of Twizzlers, M&Ms and caramel-covered popcorn. Which isn’t saying much. Frankly, Robert De Niro’s hotel in trendy TriBeCa is a disappointment and the buzz about the hotel is probably as much as anything about the chance of rubbing shoulders with the screen god.

Yes, there’s good artisan work, reclaimed timber and handmade terracotta tiles; it’s almost-homely (his dad’s oils line the walls); and the staff are very friendly, although they forgot to show me to my room on arrival. But it slightly misfires with that Italy-meets-Morocco-and-Tibet-via-England look. The vibe is wannabe Soho House, but without the stylishness of Nick Jones’ empire.

The basement Shibui Spa is another thing altogether. It’s in a beautifully reconstructed 250-year old Japanese bamboo farmhouse which was erected by traditional Japanese craftsmen – nail-free and with an ancient knot-tying technique. It’s Asian simplicity at its best. There’s a proper lap-sized swimming pool, lit by lanterns, and touches like Oriental tea cabinets treated with persimmon juice for that perfect colour; plus fitness room with old hemlock floors and hidden lights.

De Niro’s personal trainer is on offer; and so too spa director Thuyen Nguyen’s custom-made French-Vietnamese organic products and hands. The treatment rooms include one with a Japanese tub for bathing rituals. Once I’ve changed into a Japanese Yukata robe, Thuyen gives my face a sublime workout, massages me to heaven ($220, 50 minutes) and walks on my back while holding a handrail on the ceiling. Pure bliss. De Niro is missing out. ‘He hates to be touched,’ I’m told.

The Greenwich Hotel, 377 Greenwich Street, New York, NY 10013
Tel: 212 941 8900
www.thegreenwichhotel.com
Open only to hotel guests. Opened in April 2008.

BEST FOR FILMS
It’s their first hotel out of London. Now Firmdale owners Tim and Kit Kemp (of Covent Garden and Soho Hotel fame) have hit Manhattan. The 86-bedroom Crosby Street Hotel oozes character, colour and texture – courtesy of Kit Kemp’s snazzy eye – plus boasts a mix of contemporary pieces and antiques.

If you’re not staying the night, just pass through the lobby with its soaring windows and cool artwork to the subterranean 99-seater screening room. Then sink into a tangerine Poltrona Frau leather cinema seat to enjoy state-of-the-art sound and digital technology.

It’s open to the public on Sunday (‘Film Club’) nights. They show recent releases and classics with a short beforehand.

Tickets $50 a person (including set dinner) or $25 (with cocktail and bar plate). Or rent it any day for a private viewing ($600 per hour).

79 Crosby Street New York NY 10012
Tel: 212 226 6400
Fax: 212 226 0055
Email: crosby@firmdale.com
firmdale.com
Opened October 2009

CONCIERGE
Lady Cosima Somerset’s Concierge London can take the strain out of premium lifestyles by sorting everything from rare table bookings to VIP cultural outings and the best accommodation for clients. Now she’s opened Concierge New York. An invitation-only members’ club offering bespoke lifestyle management services, membership is capped at 100 between the two offices. As Lady Annabel Goldsmith’s niece and a one-time friend of Princess Diana, it’s likely that Lady C has an OK-ish little black book.

Concierge New York membership: $20,000 per year plus services $80 per hour
Tel: 212 982 5330
www.conciergenewyork.com

Concierge London membership: £10,000 per year plus services from £40 per hour
Tel: 020 7736 2244
www.conciergelondon.co.uk
Opened Sept 2008

CARS
Farrell may be one of the most expensive car hire firms in Manhattan, but it’s probably the best. Since there’s no legal parking in NY and finding garage space is time-consuming, using a limo service is big in the Big Apple. (Many of Farrell’s clients also have their own drivers; this is the second car, darling.)

Their sparklingly gleaming vehicles – ‘Everything from brother and sister sedans, stretchers and formals to vans for the Louis Vuitton,’ reveals my driver – are a distinctive royal blue with a lighter blue roof. (‘You’ll understand why when you come out of your wedding at the Pierre and see 100 black Lincolns.’)

Unlike yellow cabs, these chauffeurs have done The Knowledge, NY-style; many are fluent in second languages; and some are accredited tour guides too. They are besuited with smart haircuts, white shirt and Farrell tie – two-toned to match the car, natch. Plus they’re always punctual or early. ‘There is no late,’ says one driver.

Tel: 212 861 6300
www.farrellcarcompany.com
From Cadillac Sedan $70 per hour to Mercedes Benz $100 per hour
Two hours minimum
To Newark, Teterboro and Kennedy Airports

Part Two: Eating and drinking

CHIC
One of the hardest reservations in NYC is the Minetta Tavern in The Village, Keith McNally’s (of Balthazar and Pastis fame) recent revamp of the 1930s saloon bar. There’s an unlisted number for insiders and a 6pm (if you’re lucky) dinner reservation for outsiders.

Perhaps I should have ordered one of the lavishly-reviewed steaks or burgers, as my salt cod-stuffed squid was ill-conceived. The restaurant is also uncomfortable, cramped and chaotic. It’s known as a head-swivelling place and I ended up as a cork screw – but didn’t see anyone well-known apart from my companion, a friend of Warhol.

Contrastingly, lunch at Maialino – über-NY restaurateur Danny Meyer’s just-opened trattoria overlooking Gramercy Park – was a pleasure. Channelling Rome, its delizioso food – albeit in social X-ray portions – comes with slick service from film-extra waiters. There is also an airy, light room with rustic tables, weathered wood floors and what the Americans term ‘salami stations’.

The Monkey Bar is one of the prettiest rooms in New York with its Edward Sorel murals, subdued lighting and tinkling piano. At dinner it’s full of dressed-to-kill corporate women dining sans hommes, and Old Money.

With its Caprice-like menu, charming staff and buzz, it’s hard to fault. Our party went long on lobster – lobster cocktails and superlative lobster pie. It’s owned by Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter and reservations are only by email unless you’re what’s known locally as a FOG. (Friend of Graydon’s.) Anyone want his home number?

Minetta Tavern
113 MacDougal Street, New York, NY 10012-1201
Tel: 212 475 3850
www.minettatavernny.com

Maialino
2 Lexington Ave
Tel: 212 777 2410
www.maialinonyc.com

The Monkey Bar
Elysee Hotel, 60 East 54th Street between Madison and Park Aves.
reservations@monkeybarnewyork.com

GASTRO
The Breslin, April Bloomfield’s (of Spotted Pig fame) new restaurant in the hip Ace Hotel, doesn’t take reservations – so call before you queue. It has Scottish baronial-meets-Edwardian caff décor and serves modern European meat-centric fare.

If you have enough light to read it, it’s a great menu. Chargrilled lamb-burger with feta, cumin mayo and thrice cooked chips is their signature dish ($17. Oh, plus gratuities suggested generously at ‘15%, 18% or 20%’.) Excellent, like everything we tried.

The Breslin
16 West 29th Street
Tel: 212 679 1939
www.thebreslin.com

ART
Plumes of red smoke, washing lines or an immense clitoris in the scale of 450:1. Those are some artists’ suggestions for filling the void in the Guggenheim, the iconic Frank Lloyd Wright museum.

Alternatively, you can just have lunch at The Wright, its elegant new eaterie. It occupies a sleek white-on-white space designed by Andre Kikoski, a leading new-guard architect. Inspired by the original corkscrew building, there’s a curvilinear walnut wall, sweeping blue leather banquette and layered white ceiling, plus Liam Gillick’s orange and yellow powder-coated aluminium planks mounted horizontally on the walls and ceiling, The horizon produced by a factory once it has stopped producing views.

Chef Rodolfo Contreras (ex-David Bouley) has created a modern American menu with seasonal, local and sustainable ingredients, and inventive dishes like Roasted Suckling Pig, Quince, Violet Mustard and Apple Bacon Jus. The curved bar is for ‘small plates’ (panini, almond soup), or you can sit at a curved communal table or that banquette.

Flawless service – while I’m in the loo, my napkin is re-folded. And the food? Baby Octopus Mosaic is pure Pompeii. Halibut comes with miniature pansies, artfully arranged sugar peas and a potato-chive sauce in Picassoesque lines. World class art on a plate.

The Wright at the Solomon R Guggenheim Museum
1071 Fifth Avenue at 88th Street
Tel: 212 427 5690
www.thewrightrestaurant.com
Lunch Monday to Wednesday, dinner Thursday to Saturday, brunch Sunday
Opened December 2009

DRINKS
The Boom Boom Room is 18 floors above the groovy Meatpacking District. There’s a lot of hype (‘They make you re-re-confirm and still don’t have your name at the door,’ complains a Christie’s director) and posturing (‘Let me check your coat, or we’ll take it later. We have a no jackets on furniture policy,’ preens the receptionist).

Despite this and Madonna sightings, this wannabe Studio 54 is a must-see. It has Art-Deco ocean-liner-style leather banquettes, waitresses in skimpy backless dresses and an open wood fire, plus spectacular wraparound views through floor-to-ceiling windows – including in the loo – and vertiginous glass-floored smoking terraces.

The bar is full of committed American cocktail drinkers on ‘Kissed a Girl’ and ‘Absolution’ from 4–9pm. The 10pm-4am ‘party’ is with a DJ and ‘guest list only’, mainly accessed through knowing the owner, André Balazs. There is no membership fee – yet.

And there’s also an adjacent black-tiled room with a triangular soaking tub – which I wasn’t shown… Is that where they glug the 1952 Krug, $14,400 a bottle?

Boom Boom Room at the Standard Hotel
848 Washington Street at West 13th, Meatpacking District, New York NY 10014
Tel: 212 645 4646
www.standardhotels.com
Opened September 2009

Part Three: Being There

ART
Getting into a good exhibition in New York is like trying to bag first place at the Selfridges sale. Now those in the know can enjoy touring the Museum of Modern Art without the crowds. HNWs, especially, love these private before- or after-hours visits and they’re great for corporate entertaining.

Although, it has to be said, there were some live nude bodies in the recently-finished Marina Abramovic exhibition. If you want something less challenging, catch MoMA’s excellent retrospective of 300 Henri Cartier-Bresson photographs in private. Private guided tours last an hour and are with a Museum lecturer. A snip at $50 a person.

Private visits with a Museum lecturer are available 9.30-10.30am, 5.30-6.30pm. Minimum ten people. MoMA also offers these exclusive tours on Tuesday afternoons, when the Museum is closed to the public.

If buying contemporary art’s your thing, check out the arrival of Hauser & Wirth in Manhattan. Representing both emerging and established artists (and the estates of Henry Moore and Eva Hesse), it opened in September with a show of the influential American artist Allan Kaprow. Saves the schlep to the gallery’s outposts in Zurich and Picadilly.

The New Museum of Contemporary Art’s witty seven-tiered building – a stack of metal mesh-clad, off-centre boxes designed by SANAA – is more notable than the current exhibition. It has just shown Jeff Koons’ first time as a curator. Entitled Skin Fruit, it was an ill-chosen, badly-installed selection of pieces from Greek buh-zillionaire Dakis Joannou’s collection. But Maurizio Cattelan’s ‘All’, eight life-size occupied body-bags made of Carrara marble, got my vote.

Go also for Pavel Althamer’s iconic ‘Schedule of the Crucifix’ (2005). It’s a heavy oak cross fitted with a bike seat, straps and handles and with a folding ladder and screen beside it. At unscheduled intervals, a man changes into his crown of thorns and loincloth and climbs his ladder to take up his position on his cross.

Additionally the view of the Lower East side is great from the Sky Room. And virtually every nook bears the name of a sponsor. Even the 60-person elevator is dedicated to a local couple. I’d like a lift named after me.

Moma
11 West Fifty-third Street, between Fifth and Sixth Avenues
Tel: 212 708 9400
moma.org

Hauser & Wirth
39 East 69th Street, New York NY 10021
Tel: 212 794 4970

New Museum
235 Bowery
Tel: 212 219 1222
www.newmuseum.org

CLUB
Hailed the new Soho House – but not affiliated with it – Norwood is a members-only arts club on the Lower West Side. It’s spread over five floors of a nineteenth-century townhouse with a restaurant, three lounge bars, screening room and private meeting rooms – think Vogue fashion shoots to book launches.

Trendy and bohemian, Norwood has ultra high-backed sofas, beetroot walls and is scattered with books and paintings by members – who include musicians, writers, Oscar-winners and entrepreneurs. At lunchtime the salon is full of multi-tasking folk tapping on laptops, networking, talent-nurturing and eating decent club food. Plus there’s a garden for hog roasts, Cuban bands and models. Hardly surprising that Mick Jagger likes it.

Norwood
241 West 14th Street
Membership: $2000 per year
Open 8.30am until 3 am
www.norwoodclub.com
Opened 2008

CLOTHES
Disaffected JP Morgan man-turned-fashionista Shawn Bell has just opened lifestyle store Bellhaus in Soho. Upscale and modern, it’s for the working woman and fashionable man. It sells RTW (ready to wear, darling), including many American designers and well-selected pieces from Azzedine Alaïa and Sophie Theallet to Tom Binns. From $220 for a daytime tote to vintage Bill Blass at $38,000, plus shoes, accessories, Malin+Goetz skincare, eyewear, candles and Kilian perfumes. Think Beach in the City.

Bellhaus
57 Bond St at Bowery, New York, New York 10012
Tel: 212 505 0057
www.bellhausnyc.com
Opened April 2010

FITNESS/SPA
The latest fitness craze to hit Manhattan is AntiGravity Yoga. It’s done suspending from a fabric hammock – allowing us to stretch further, hold postures longer and look like demented spiders. ‘The fabric holds up to 1000lbs,’ consoles the instructor. Phew!
First the Setai Wall Street luxurious condominiums (the penthouse, $7.82 million, made a Financial District record) and then the Setai Club (for exclusive business and lifestyle services). Now the Setai Spa.

Just steps from the NY Stock Exchange, this spa (open to all, but with benefits for members) is a genuine sanctuary – not least after the NYPD concrete roadblocks and canine sniffers outside. There are over-size soaking tubs, walnut walls, flickering candles and mahogany lockers: 12,000 sq foot of Asian serenity, couples’ suites (massage for two $500, 90 mins), fitness centre and impeccable service.

First one can go into the AquaGrotto (separate ones for men and women) which even has a mineral-infused jacuzzi soak. Then it’s onto an extra-wide, heated massage table for a perfect Essential Facial ($185, 60 mins). I float into the Relaxation Lounge for warm neck pillows and teas, truffles and macaroons from SHO, Shuan Hergatt’s Michelin starred restaurant downstairs. Faultless on every count.

Crunch
crunch.com for class venues

Setai Spa
40 Broad Street
$5,000 per year for Premium Membership and $2,500 for Wellness Membership
Tel: 212 792 6193
www.setaiclubnewyork.com
Opened Feb 2010

THERE’S a doggie spa and a pooch bakery in Telluride, Colorado. The former offers custom-made towelling robes and a grooming package (from $210, or £157) for four-legged guests; while the latter sells icing-topped cookies baked specially for the canine market. Visitors can also savour another unusual experience in Telluride: iceskating with Zimmer frames – a unique approach that is perfect for the elderly and skating virgins.

It doesn’t stop there. How about dining in the village on elk, venison, bison or buffalo?

Drinking in a Victorian pub that comes straight out of a cowboy movie? Shopping for antiques, cashmere throws and snowboards?

Or attending a jazz festival where every dog wears a bandanna?

It’s all possible in Telluride, in the middle of the majestic 14,000ft peaks of the San Juan Mountains. Located on the far western slopes of the Colorado Rockies, it can be difficult to get there – my banker husband, Robert Stein, and I fly from London to Denver first – because Telluride is the highest and most dangerous airport in America. This is fantastic, because it keeps the riffraff away. But in winter, we don’t risk the hazardous conditions and fly to Montrose instead.

Yes, Telluride is exclusive. Tom Cruise, Oprah Winfrey and Sylvester Stallone have homes here. They are drawn to Telluride Mountain Village, where the big wealth and our property, Bobcat Lodge, is. Houses on sale there range from $8.95 million (£6.4 million) to $14.5 million (£10.35 million). It’s just a scenic gondola ride from the historic town of Telluride, with its charming Victorian cottages and Old West atmosphere.

Our property is a traditional log cabin – 7,000sq ft and five bedrooms – with Ralph Lauren furnishings and antiques. Think rich chocolate Chesterfield sofas, paisley cushions and log fires. The bedrooms boast king-size beds – from a leather one to a four-poster – and the bathrooms have sunken baths. It also has a media room with a 16sq ft plasma screen, underfloor heating and broadband connections. We let it for $2,000 (about £1,430) a night.

One night I took eight friends on skidoos (ski motorbikes) to dine at 11,300ft at Alta Lakes Observatory. It’s a beautiful mountain lodge 13 miles from Telluride that, in winter, can only be accessed on cross-country skis, snow shoes or a snowmobile. Wearing headlamps, we spent a fun hour getting there through the forest and were rewarded with a delicious dinner, charades and a return trip on a Snowcat.

I love skiing and luckily the lodge is right on the slopes. Telluride has some of the most difficult skiing in America – it’s where the US team do their training – and the United States’ best iceclimbing park, in Ouray.

In the summer we ride, fish, river raft, go rock climbing, mountain biking, running, play golf and climb mountains. One week we did four 14,000ft climbs – leaving at 2am and climbing for 12 hours. You can’t beat sitting under the stars afterwards, roasting marshmallows, putting them in a cracker and dipping it in chocolate. Just grab a tent, rucksack, sleeping bag, sandwiches and crampons and go.

If the exertions get too much, you can always relax alongside the rich and famous in one of the world’s best spas: Wyndham Peaks Resort & Golden Door Spa in Telluride. Once I saw Jerry Seinfeld there – he kept winking at me!

It’s very upmarket and serene, with huge towels and everyone whispering. Its treatments use fresh natural ingredients found only in Rocky Mountain country.

Is there anything wrong with Telluride? Yes, people who aren’t used to high altitudes will initially get headaches and experience breathlessness. Just drink lots of water and stay still – but not for too long as there are 355 days of sunshine a year to enjoy. We have a house in Belgravia, a castle in Scotland and a villa in Phuket, but if I could change the world to be like Telluride, I would.

To rent Bobcat Lodge, contact Katharine Pooley at 19 Wilton Row, London, SW1X 7NS (852 9430 2000; email: pooleyk@netvigator.com).

Katharine Pooley was talking to Caroline Phillips

INSIDER KNOWLEDGE

BUYING Get comfortable: the following properties in Telluride Mountain Village are similar to Bobcat Lodge: the ski-in, ski-out Sundance Lookout has seven bedrooms, a lift, and even its own bowling alley for $14,499,000 (£10.35 million). Aspene Pointe has five bedrooms and direct ski access for $8.95 million (£6.4 million). Both through Telluride Real Estate (001 970 728 1611).

Canine comforts: pamper your pooch at the doggie spa at Wyndham Peaks with a doggie massage for $60 (£43). Room rates start at $165 (£118) a night and vary by season. Wyndham Peaks Resort & Golden Door Spa, 136 Country Club Drive, Telluride, Colorado (001 970 728 6800; www.wyndham.com).

For gourmet pet food and fab accessories, visit Mountain Tails, 224 East Colorado Avenue, Telluride (001 970 369 4240).

Posh nosh: for bison and other exotic meat dishes, dine at Harmons, 300 South Townsend, Telluride (001 970 728 3773).

They say in Mexico City that the pigeons drop dead from the sky when they hit the smog. Aldous Huxley once said he had never felt so bad tempered as he did during a week’s stay there.

Can it be that bad? Our taxi driver guide immediately takes the matter into his own hands and, ignoring red traffic lights, drives us in his yellow VW Beetle beyond the polluted city to Teotihuacan, the first great civilisation of central Mexico, which existed between AD 100 and 600. We haven’t had a chance yet to change money and so, with a smile as big as the nearby Pyramid of the Sun, the driver pulls down his socks, pulls out his cash and gives us some to be going on with. The site of Teotihuacan is sublime – with vast pyramids, plazas, esplanades and Aztec ruins. Back in Mexico City, we dine at Prendes, where Leon Trotsky and painter Frida Kahlo ate before us. Before eating, the maitre d’ thinks we should watch the game of jai-alai (pelota) being played next door with what looks like a giant banana. Gentlemen must wear a tie to watch the game and my companion is not wearing one. The maitre d’ takes his off and ties it round my friend’s neck, though he doesn’t give us any cash from his socks. The next day a policeman offers to drive us to the market in his police car, but doesn’t give us his tie either. We go to see the National Palace with its moving murals by founder of the Mexican muralist movement Diego Rivera portraying five centuries of Mexico’s history; the impressive Metropolitan Cathedral made of 3,000 tonnes of marble and granite; and the Museum of Anthropology, with its pre-Hispanic exhibits and remarkable design.

Later we visit Frida Kahlo’s house (a museum) but the man at the door says he’s taken all the pictures and furniture away and doesn’t let us in. So we go to the house where Trotsky spent his last years writing and tending his pet rabbit before he met an untimely end with an ice pick plunged into his head. The body has gone, but pictures and furniture are intact. Nearly 350 miles to the south is the graceful colonial city of Oaxaca, where the Mexicans say there are 20 earthquakes a day. The buildings are made of very chunky stones to avoid their effects. We stay in one such, the Hotel Stouffer Presidente, a heavenly former jail and 16th century convent. Nuns were banned in the anti-clerical 1860s and the hotel now has a sombre elegance, a swimming pool among the cloisters and attentive service. We feast on fried tortillas with chicharon, stuffed tamales, rolled tortillas with chocolate-based mole sauce and chicken, Tasajo beef and marinated pork with refried beans. Afterwards we sit at a sidewalk cafe in the plaza surrounded by Spanish baroque buildings and huge trees. Oaxaca has a famous twice-weekly market where ladies scrub their squealing piglets with washing-up liquid and women with flashing smiles and bright costumes sit amid the colourful riot of cardamom, pumpkin roasted in honey, papaya and glistening vegetables grown in the volcanic soil. They sell scarves woven in turquoise, pink and yellow, natural black earthenware, ponchos, green pottery and rugs that have taken two months to weave and tell the story of village life. A lady insisted that my friend ate chapulines – tiny red grasshoppers deep-fried in garlic-flavoured oil – from her brimming basket of dead and salty bugs.

We continued to Villahermosa and made an 80-mile jeep ride to Palenque, most sacred of Mayan ruins. Set in a parrot-filled, threatened rainforest, they rise on artificial terraces. Among them is the royal palace, with a tower which was possibly an observatory and a pyramid containing a royal tomb. Light in style, delicately embellished and with mysterious stone sculptures and glyphs, the place has a haunting feel.

Next stop is San Cristobal de las Casas, a little hill town 177 kilometres from Palenque. It was founded by the Andalucians in the 16th century. Indians in bright shawls drink hot chocolate and barbecue corn on the cob (served with chili) amid colonial mansions and Baroque churches. Across the border is Guatemala, with weather that the tourist authorities describe as eternal spring and a saint called Maximon whose favourite offerings are cigarettes and rum. We drive through the spectacular scenery of the Maya Highlands, 90 miles from Guatemala City to Chichicastenango, known, for obvious reasons, as Chichi. It is a very Indian town with cobbled streets and whitewashed houses and a Sunday market full of over-zealous traders selling dance masks and brand new ‘antique’ artifacts. We sit on the steps outside Santo Tomas church (16th century and built on the site of a Maya pyramid) amid the incense burning and flower sellers. Inside is the sound of praying. Our eight-year-old, self-styled guide, Tomas, points out that the rose petal and pine needle offerings are ‘pagan ritual, Mister’, but can’t answer any questions. It takes a while to twig he has simply learned his English tour script by heart.

He also takes us past a room filled with 50 young boys and shielded from the street by tarpaulin. Inside, all the Tomases of the town are glued to a television set, watching a Spanish-dubbed western.

We stay in The Mayan Inn with its open fires in bedrooms filled with Colonial chests, figures, carved furniture, antique mirrors and old Spanish chairs that the owner, Mr Clark, sometimes bought from earthquake victims in Antigua. There are no locks on the doors and attendants in local costume stand watch outside. In the courtyard a parrot sits next to an ancient Maya sculpture and a marimba band plays.

Lake Atitlan is our next stop: the romantic Hotel Atitlan overlooking the deep green lake and what appear to be most of Guatemala’s 33 volcanoes. Well, three, actually.

Next door are two partly built skyscrapers where work stopped more than 10 years ago when the Nicaraguan money from the Somoza regime dried up. We take a boat across the lake to the village of Santiago Atitlan, where local Indians throng around a man in the market selling PMT tablets as a cure for arthritis, old age, impotence and tiredness. This is also the home of the smoking and drinking Saint Maximon and of some atrocious military killings. I still dream of Guatemala City, crumbling Antigua, volcanoes, colonial charm and jungle. Of vivid fabrics, mountain regions, Mayan sites and marimba music. But not of poisoned pigeons . . .

How: This holiday was organised through Cathy Matos Mexican Tours (61 High Street, Barnet EN5 5UR; 081 440 4306) with flights to Miami with Virgin Atlantic and onward by AeroMexico. The firm could arrange an itinerary similar to that followed by Caroline Phillips from around £1,200.