So, some genius has come up with the idea of “Collector” hotels, the idea of which is to
Hotels
The Pool House is an amazingly luxurious, plush bed & breakfast in the North-West of Scotland.
Old Church Free Manse is a tiny, hilariously cute B&B run by a young couple near the very North of the Scottish mainland.
Château la Roque in Provence – a warm, friendly, welcoming atmosphere in gorgeous surroundings – the view alone is worth a million bucks.
Not even the weird Russian girl with the enormous cleavage seated next to us, alternating between visibly jonesing for a smoke on an industrial scale, and staring fascinatedly over toward whatever-the-hell-it-was we were doing, could detract from them. Good wine list, excellent garden (no, really excellent), nice decor, and yes, good solid food and desserts beat weird enormous Russian cleavage by a mile. That, and they give you outstanding free caramels in your room. Two thumbs up.
To her credit, though, the owner of the château is pretty gracious and friendly. I would be too, if I lived in the middle of a beautiful countryside on a palatial estate.
The castle has an enormous walled park around it, the kind in which you expect to see happy deer prancing across the road (at least, they have “beware of deer prancing across road” signs), and peasants milling around outside the gate, angrily shaking their fists at the nobility chasing prancing deer around the forest inside.
We’d only intended to stay in Colombo for two days on our way to Bentota Beach, escaping the freezing cold and rain of continental Europe in January, and to spend our second New Year’s Eve in a row in a reasonably agreeable place, as devoid of French tourists as possible. Colombo has a (fairly deserved) [...]
Nov 222010
Rule #1 about busloads of retired German pipefitters on tourist jaunts to Alsatian excursion spots: they don’t look much better bundled up in winter clothes than they do broiling on a Mediterranean pool chair (that they’ve gotten up at 3 a.m. to reserve). Dylan Moran described it best as “pork scratchings on a towel”. Dylan [...]
