The Curation: Volume 63
New(s) in the hotel world, my new apartment in Florence, and a review for an affordable, striped-filled hotel gem just off the Ponte Vecchio.
Today’s Agenda
A longer prologue than usual, a bit of an amuse bouche for the reintroduction of my section where I talk about new hotel openings, now called Big New(s).
I have a home! TLDR I love my Florence apartment and my mental health has soared since. I tell you all about it.
14 new hotels, many with pictures, the majority exciting. On the docket: Southern California, the Hudson Valley, Santa Fe, Savannah, Florence (this is a brand new very exciting one), London, Devon, Ibiza, Málaga, Cortina, the South of France, Luxembourg, Singapore, and India. We go all over! So much new(s). And yes, I’m thrilled with myself for that name.
A hotel review for perhaps the best-located hotel in Florence that’s affordable and filles with stripes.
For Consideration
La Veste one-upped Reformation with their brand trip to Capri this last week. The founders, Blanca Miró and Maria de la Orden, who are the chicest of chic, took their creative friends and stayed at the incredible rental Villa Aiano. They wore the brand everywhere but in a way that felt so natural. The welcome gifts weren’t excessive, instead cute and thoughftful, and they opted for investing in photography and a hospitality takeover instead of “big” influencers. Namely, they took over Lo Scoglio in Nerano, which is about the smartest thing a brand or a human could do in July. The waiters wore striped La Veste aprons and it was quite the sight. The whole trip worked well from a content perception because La Veste naturally well in Capri and Nerano. It worked because the founders were there, with their actual friends, and the brand actually comes from their minds. It worked because the investment was on capturing the spirit of the brand, not buzz. Ref in Residence tries to do this and does succeed, but La Veste wins. The critical keys? The women have great senses of personal style, and the content was capturing moments, not curating them for the camera (they did that too, but not just that, which is important).
via @lavestelaveste on Instagram Belmond has unveiled their newest offering, an incredible Art Nouveau private villa available for rent, Villa Beatrice. It has one of the most magical positions on the Italian Riviera, but still a walk away from the Splendido and Splendido Mare. It’s incredible.
Villa Beatrice via @belmondsplendido on Instagram While their home is being reimagined, the Pompidou has moved into the Grand Palais, which reopened after an extensive four-year renovation. I like what the institutions like – cross-city collaboration in the arts. Paris never lets its museum game lack.
Portrait Milano has an outdoor cinema this summer, and you don’t have to be a guest.
In a TV interview with Gayle King, Paris Hilton revealed that she will be entering the hotel space, but was very hush hush perfectly Paris and I’m intensely curious.
Many A-listers were invited to celebrate the launch of the Ritz-Carlton Yacht Collection’s newest ship, Luminara, and despite my feed’s flood of glitzy content, it’s still the hardest of no’s for me. Shine doesn’t buy soul!
A new Barbara Kruger show recently opened at the Guggenheim Bilbao, something to prioritize if you’re in Basque Country. There’s also a Rick Owens retrospective at Palais Galliera in Paris through September 4th. And lastly, if you’re in Milan until July 27th, I’d make my way to the Galleria at 10 Corso Como for the Guido Guidi exhibit.
Locke de Santa Joana in Lisbon executed an idea I’ve been pitching brands for years: a shoppable hotel room, in partnership with Athropologie. Smart!
In good news for me and Happy Hoteling but bad news for the state of global taste and aspiration, this report1 found that 70% of luxury travelers say that luxury hotels have “lost their soul to standardization.” I clearly agree and you probably do too and that’s why you’re here!
All the Big New(s) can be found below in the paid section.
For Consumption
Source Unknown has a lot of good pieces right now, especially these pale pink balloon pants and this perfectly unique simple white tunic.
While we’re on the simple and unique page, this white “woven” skirt is quite special and this is the only plain white tank top I have ever felt strongly about – it fits perfectly.
I’m having a moment with big chunky silver pieces of jewelry worn with my regular gold, and these earrings and this ear cuff are both calling my name (and are on sale).
Away kindly gifted me their mini crossbody in the red and I had no idea I was missing this from my travel life. I wore it in the airport and on the airplane and it carried my passport, a card, hand lotion, lip balm, a toothbrush and toothpaste, my charger and my headphones. Essentially, everything I needed in-hand at all times without actually having to use a single hand. It opens up in a way that gives you full access to the two compartments without letting anything spill out. It’s small but game-changing and I am not being paid to say this.
Happy Hoteling!
I Have a Home Again
Yes, traveling is both my biggest passion and my career, but I’m also a lifelong true homebody. Both can exist and in my life, must. I’ve had wonderful times and trips over the last few months, but I’ve also had an underlying sense of unease because I have not had my own home. If I’ve learned anything over the past few months it’s the privilege of having a home, or at least a home base.
It didn’t help the unease that I was moving into an apartment that I was never able to see inside. I’ve always gone with the apartment that I had the gut feelings with in the online listing, but I knew that was no lifetime guarantee.
I knew I’d been extra anxious the past few months, but I physically felt my heart rate slow when I entered the door and really loved the place from the jump. My body and mind really needed this, and I feel so downright grateful. You can go to the most beautiful islands in the world and have the cutest hometown but internal peace is priceless.
It’s so trite to say it just has good energy, but it does. It’s filled with light in differing acts from the moment the sun rises until after it sets. When I was in my month-long apartment in Piazza Pitti in March, it was epically-located and equally so in Renaissance-era detail, but it had no natural light. I loved it, but I’m so glad I went with what I always try to – the top floor unit flooded with sun.
On the listing, it had said the apartment was a fifth-floor walkup, of which I am no stranger. But, for my five years in New York, those many steps certainly did affect my life. I would either pack a day of activities and plans and wear something that worked for all, I would go to do one thing and then come home to put it away or rest or do something and then never re-emerge, or I’d stay home all together. Clearly the staying home part is more than fine with me, it’s what I want and need, but I also wanted and needed to come and go easily in Florence.
So for the past few months, in addition to the unknown of the apartment at-large, I also had this fear that I made the wrong decision because it was a fifth-floor walkup. I think that fear was louder than I thought, based on the full nervous system reset in progress.
When the taxi dropped me at the closest piazza and I started walking down my pedestrian-only street, I rang the bell and my landlord buzzed me in, the sound reverberating through my anxiety. I left my suitcase downstairs and started what I thought would be the trek up. It turns out that they counted a landing as a floor, there are few stairs, and they are short. It was 102 degrees and felt like 108 and I got to my apartment without being out of breath. If you know me in real life you know that this is some strange wonder. A marvel! Dozens of times later already, this miracle has remained. But also it’s a 5th floor walk-up that feels like a second-floor walkup in SoHo or San Francisco.
The apartment is on the top floor, and when you open the door to the apartment you face a very steep set of blue steps to reach the apartment. Ascending, it feels like my own little world and one I’m so lucky to live in.
The online photos made the place seem really charming, but we all know that doesn’t necessarily correlate to reality. Another huge exhale – these did. Throughout my adult life, whenever I’ve expressed my lack of fondness for a place it has often been met with a variation of “it’s not charming enough for you?” Charm is my thing, Hotel People. Some people need vanilla coffee creamer and I need to sleep somewhere charming.
The ceilings are brick with wooden beams, tall in the living room, slanted in the bedroom. The old, particularly Florentine kind. From one window in the living room and the shower, I see the tower of the Palazzo Vecchio. From another, it’s the terracotta roofs that mark the city. It feels like Florence, and that’s what I wanted most. Windows are important.
But it’s also the perfect amount of renovated, something I didn’t know if I’d ever really find in-budget in Italy without doing it myself. The bathroom is small but new and not the ugly kind, the bed not the hard typical Italian sort that I was fully prepared to replace. I have a washing machine and a dishwasher and two AC units that work perfectly. I have striped accents in the living room, and most of all, a skylight above my bed. I have a full-length mirror and strong Wi-Fi and it feels pristinely clean and alive while being a very old apartment. It’s perfect for me.
My friends have always said I don’t have much of a type in men, but I’d like to argue I do with apartments, and good taste.
I’ve always liked the area of Santa Croce, but admittedly I hadn’t spent all that much time here. But it was where my dad lived and more than anything, I knew it was a neighborhood that would still feel like the Florence I love in the height of summer. Walking out of my door is peaceful2, and for many minutes.
My whole life, I’ve loathed going to the grocery store – I find it taxing and boring. But I love any and all market in the true sense of the world, and now I live a stone’s throw away from the best of them all, Mercato di Sant’Ambrogio. I’m really thrilled the stairs aren’t a thing because it turns out that I really like running out for a few things just as they open in the morning. I’m nearly sure this proximity to great bresaola will cure my anemia.
But I’m also really loving the other things of the neighborhood, the sort I may not have sought if I were staying only a month. Where to buy a Moka for my morning espresso, or pillows, or the closest shakerato open before 8:30am. The beauty of the neighborhood is the small stuff co-existing with the cool great names like Lisa Corti and Cibrèo. It’s in the many piazzas (I know that’s not the correct plural in Italian), and the lack of lines. It it, in fact, the perfect place for me to live until October.
If this weren’t already rented from then on, it’s the type of apartment I could live in for a very long time. The neighborhood is exactly where I want to be.
Big New(s)
This is officially the new name of this feature, which will become a Happy Hoteling mainstay. It seems like you enjoy knowing about stuff before most else, and I love providing it. I will continue to share certain super-buzzed about things and non-hotel new(s) in the For Consideration section before the paywall, but the top intel will be relegated to here. If you can’t tell by the title, this is where we talk shop – new hotels you should know about and hotel news worth talking about.