From heady days and nights at the Hôtel du Couvent in Nice to pina coladas and getting caught in the rain at The Brando in French Polynesia. For this Guide, I very much embraced the word of the year - Charlie XCX’s much-maligned term Brat - well, really Bratler does have such a good ring to it..
. It certainly chimed with my thoughts on this year’s list of hotels featured, who all have such a strong sense of identity and just do what they do in the most unapologetically fabulous way. Meditating in a folly here by the soft early-morning light, overlooking the red-tiled roofs, you feel something close to nostalgia for the very moment you’re in.
It’s like you’ve checked in with God – in part due to the building’s layered ecclesiastical history. From 1604, the Poor Clares were in occupation; and from 1803 until the early 1980s, when it began to fall into ruin, the Order of the Visitation of Holy Mary. And all those centuries of pious contemplation have endowed this place with such a potent serenity, it embraces you as soon as you cross the threshold from the Old Town (though the warm lemon madeleines waiting at reception will also stop you in your tracks).
The Couvent’s mastermind was the maverick and brilliant hotelier Valéry Grégo – famed for Les Roches Rouges, and Le Pigalle in Paris – and this utopian-minded scene-maker deserves an award for his energy and commitment alone. Not to mention the foresight that led him to embark on a decade-long restorati.
