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Not all seats are equal. Especially on Etihad.
Read full review: Not all seats are equal. Especially on Etihad.The thing about first-world problems is that the moment you complain about anything remotely luxurious, somebody lobs the phrase “first-world problems” at your head as if they’ve delivered the final word in moral philosophy. Bad service at a Michelin-starred restaurant in Mayfair? First-world problems. Your Aston Martin has ludicrously expensive parts? First-world problems. The caviar…
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Man Wah – Silk Slippers Above the Harbour
Read full review: Man Wah – Silk Slippers Above the HarbourHong Kong, after Shenzhen, feels like stepping out of a spaceship and into a well cut Savile Row suit. Not because it’s old, though parts of it gloriously are, but because it understands something Shenzhen hasn’t yet learned: that progress without polish is just noise. Shenzhen dazzles you with drone delivered toothbrushes and toilets that…
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The Hopewell Hotel: A Five-Star Stay Hidden Behind a Shopping Centre and a Lift-Based IQ Test
Read full review: The Hopewell Hotel: A Five-Star Stay Hidden Behind a Shopping Centre and a Lift-Based IQ TestThe first thing you want to know, always, is whether it’s any good. So here it is, up front, no foreplay: yes. It’s very good. Properly good. Luxurious, clean, stylish, and, annoyingly for everywhere else, brilliantly located. But, my word, the courtship. Because the Hopewell does not so much present itself as dare you to…
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Sky High and Slightly Smug in Shenzhen
Read full review: Sky High and Slightly Smug in ShenzhenSome hotels trade on geography like it’s a personality trait. White sand beaches so soft you feel guilty walking on them. Alpine perches where you’re served fondue while staring into the moral abyss of a glacier. And then there’s this place, which has decided correctly that the most dramatic natural wonder of the modern world…
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A Modern Grand Hotel That Knows Its Manners
Read full review: A Modern Grand Hotel That Knows Its MannersIf modern luxury hotels were people, most would be that over eager chap at a party who insists on telling you about his watch collection before you have even found the bar. The Shangri La Qiantan, however, is something rarer: a place with enough confidence to pour you a drink first, then quietly reveal it…
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Intercontinental Shenzhen: Calm, Coffee and Clever Toilets in Shenzhen
Read full review: Intercontinental Shenzhen: Calm, Coffee and Clever Toilets in ShenzhenBig international chains, when done properly, are not soulless monoliths but something closer to a warm bath drawn at precisely the right temperature. You arrive frazzled, over-stimulated, slightly cross with the world after another immigration queue that seems to have been designed by a sadist, and there it is: beige, marbled, quietly humming with competence.…
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Pisco, Precision and a Touch of Lima: Alfonsina Is the Real Deal
Read full review: Pisco, Precision and a Touch of Lima: Alfonsina Is the Real DealLondon is an elite city. It simply is. Not in the peacocking, velvet-rope sense, though there’s a fair bit of that to, but in the far more important way: you can wander into almost any district and, if you know where to look (or sometimes even if you don’t), stumble across somewhere that feeds you…
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Yotel Manchester – caffeine fuelled
Read full review: Yotel Manchester – caffeine fuelledQuestion. What’s better? A: A decent cup of coffee you have to walk to get. B: An instant coffee in your room. The answer, obviously, always has to be A. No one should ever be forced—before breakfast, before consciousness, before hope—to drink instant coffee. It is a moral failing disguised as convenience. Glad we’ve cleared…
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Scott’s Richmond: Oysters, Opulence, and the Comfort of Getting It Right
Read full review: Scott’s Richmond: Oysters, Opulence, and the Comfort of Getting It RightScott’s in Richmond is the sort of restaurant that makes you want to sit up a little straighter the moment you walk in, as if the building itself has opinions about posture. Oysters, opulence, and old-school service, really, what’s not to love? It is a modern throwback, which is a perfect contradiction and all the…
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The Pelican Notting Hill – Built by Gods
Read full review: The Pelican Notting Hill – Built by GodsIf the ancient gods ever convened on a cloud somewhere above W11 and announced, “Right, let’s design the world’s most implausibly perfect winter pub,” they would, naturally, bicker for a bit; Zeus insisting on thunderbolts behind the bar, Hera wanting better cushions, Dionysus demanding bottomless wine; before finally agreeing to conjure The Pelican, Notting Hill.…
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Paul Southgate is The Travel Critic—the kind of traveller who claims to love adventure, as long as it includes 24-hour room service and a spa.
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Paul Southgate: a patchwork of Hughs stitched together with fraying thread. The poor man’s Hugh Grant, all charm on a budget. The thinking woman’s Hugh Laurie, though thinking too hard might ruin the illusion. He’s got Hugh Jackman’s kindness, but not the abs, and Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s enthusiasm for food, minus the ability to turn nettles into Michelin-starred soup. A wannabe Hugh Hefner—pipe dreams in a velvet dressing gown—but in reality, closer to Hugh Bonneville, bumbling through life with a comforting sort of dignity. A man of many Hughs, and yet…none of them.
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