TraveLeave
The plush hotel, located in the heart of posh Mayfair, welcomes guests with a 15-foot UK-grown Nordmann spruce Christmas tree, as well as festive floral displays overseen by in-house designer florist Philip Hammond.
Walk through its breezy, worn-in corridors, and it’s like The Jamaica Inn never left its glory days: blue and white palettes reign supreme alongside sofa-filled rooms, an eclectic and deeply personal mix of family heirlooms, and umbrella-flecked terraces that overlook one of the island’s longest private beaches and turtle sanctuaries.
Soothing chocolate box tones abound in this stylish apartment in quiet Calle Carill, which has tastefully refined Bohemian sensibilities with plenty of comfy touches; a big pouffe, plush double bed and various sofas to jump on.
At 4pm each afternoon, she and my dad would pour glasses of shop-bought sangria for themselves (diet cokes for us, naturally), and we’d sit on the balcony of our apartment chatting and playing card games, nibbling the kind of heavily salted cheap crisps you can only get on a European holiday.
Befitting the stylish hosts (both fashion types, one a former model and the other with a CV boasting Versace and Jil Sander), the interiors are tasteful and refined, with huge windows adding grandeur and original wooden beams bringing the cosiness.
The Wahl Cordless Mini Massager Gun is the perfect solution for on-the-go muscle relief, especially after a long day on the slopes, and that’s why it’s also a Condé Nast Traveller 2024 Beauty Award Winner.
The interior is earthier, but just as striking: chunky wooden tables, rustic clay lamp bases and a collection of folk-art pieces sit harmoniously amid furnishings in the elemental colours of the island’s volcanic hills, visible through floor-to-ceiling windows.
From South African wildlife reserves to the volcanoes in Iceland to Machu Picchu in Peru and Vietnam’s Mekong Delta, a California company called NatureEye will send a remote-controlled, autonomous flying device into the sky for an aerial tour — and hand you the controls.
The Latvian carrier will add its code to Lufthansa flights from Munich Airport (MUC) to German cities Bremen, Cologne Bonn, Dusseldorf, Hamburg, Hannover and Stuttgart.
Other hotspots include Swift Borough, where the latest autumn cocktail menu features 14 tipples that pay tribute to the rich heritage and vibrant spirit of the city south of the Thames, with nods to landmarks like Crystal Palace and the Greenwich Meridian.
Downstairs is the main event – a restaurant with a big appetite for fresh seafood, along with classics such as slow-roasted lamb – but upstairs is this tucked-away bar, decorated with bubbling installations of Breaking Bad-style tubes and siphons and with more mirrors than a disco glitterball.
Fans of the film franchise, the Ian Fleming spy novels that inspired them and the actors who have incarnated the debonair British secret service agent will appreciate never-before-exhibited props, including a Fort Knox gold bar, Oddjob’s hat, Goldfinger’s golf shoes and a spyhole clock from his private plane.