The Curation: Volume 20
The Switzerland Hotel List, European retreats this summer & fall, hotel news, architecturally-interesting rentals, a very cool French hotel group, a communal dinner in Liguria, and more!
I know sparking joy is so 2015, but this post did that for me. I’ve been bummed that I had to postpone my Italy trip from now until July for family and health reasons, but this got me out of my funk. Writing! Hotels! Events! Capital S Special! That’s what I self-prescribed and now what I’m delivering today. Thank you for being here. Usually, that comes at the end but I want to start with gratitude today.
Long in the making, it’s finally The Switzerland Hotel List day. Next, a deep-dive (but curated, always) into creative and wellness retreats Europe this Summer/Fall season. Of course, we can’t go more than two weeks without hotel news, so that’s on the agenda as well - a new exciting Paris opening, new rooms at my favorite hotel in Amsterdam, and summer programming for one of my favorite Hudson Valley hidden gems. Then we cross into rental territory with a handful of incredibly interesting-to-look-at properties across Western Europe with reasonable price tags. As we finish, a spotlight on another highly cool hotel group and all their properties, before the link loves of the week. Oh! And a dinner-party with strangers under the stars in the Gulf of Poets.
The Switzerland Hotel List
Switzerland is special to me. As a kid, I was incredibly fortunate that my family had an apartment in Paris. My dad had it for 25 years, at an insanely low rent that seems impossible today. This allowed us to, as my dad puts it, “just get in the car and go somewhere.” When I was about five, he was reading me the classic kids book Heidi. I wanted to go where Heidi was from. The magical place we were reading about. My dad said, “Heidi’s place!” He got out his red leather address book, found a listing that said exactly the words he exclaimed, called, and the woman who answered (the owner) immediately recognized my dad’s voice. He had been going for years. My dad is one of those people you remember – he’s a character. Heidi said she’d have a room ready for us by early evening, and we jumped in the car. This is one of my first crystal clear travel memories. He drove as he tried to teach me how to use a map (I was five, but I still have no sense of direction), we stopped at one of the big gas stations before we crossed the Swiss border and I procured a Raffi tape (you should know I’m beaming and laughing as I write this). I was already in heaven. But as we drove through the Gotthard Base Tunnel and my dad told me this was the longest in the world, I started to feel like an adventurer – on a mission to find Heidi. I think this is when the incurable travel bug hit. Just a month before my first trip to Capri, when that was cemented.
We wove through the mountains, past little towns, and arrived at a quaint, traditional inn that I immediately loved. Mostly, because I loved wiener schnitzel and ice cream sundaes and they had both in spades. But also, the view was incredible. The town picturesque. And Heidi, the owner, told us where the Heidi I was searching for was supposedly from. We spent our time trying to get there, but with a flat tire, and despite my only time hitchhiking, we didn’t make it. So, we went back the next year. We made it! By then, I considered myself a “big girl” and that I loved the “comfy beds with the fluffy blankets and the cold air at Heidi’s Place” and decided we should return every year. We didn’t, but we did a few more times for quick stops during stays at our family friends’ a couple hours away. I loved Switzerland then, I love Switzerland now.
Plus, it’s a country where you can find a wide assortment of charming, old-world hotels. A Good Hotel Country, I’d say.
85 hotels made this list.