The Daily Telegraph - Saturday - Travel
Get ready for a Grand Tour with a twist
Whether by road or rail, chart your own course through an amazing journey, says Laura Fowler
The notion of romantic travel, and indeed of tourism as we know it, arose from the Grand Tour – a sort of 18th-century “gap yah” for aristos rounding off an Oxbridge education with cultural enlightenment.
Accompanied by staff and much luggage, the young noblemen would travel through Europe to Italy, culminating with stays in Rome and Venice. They returned learned in the arts, ideas and manners of their sophisticated European counterparts, along with elaborate souvenirs.
Writers and artists followed, on smaller budgets; and by the 19th century, even women were allowed, albeit accompanied by husbands or steely maiden aunts. In literature, the Grand Tour’s romantic legacy has endured, from Byron, Goethe, DH Lawrence, right up to Connell’s tour-on-a-shoestring in Sally Rooney’s Normal People.
In the viral age, the Grand Tour is undergoing a revival in the form of epic road trips, with a growing number of hotel groups devising their own hotelhopping journeys. And what a marvellous honeymoon it makes! Driving, top down, through vineyards and olive groves, winding along the Amalfitana or the Côte d’Azur, exploring baroque towns of creamy, crumbling stone and staying at one grande dame after another. Luggage should be plentiful, wardrobes extensive: hats and heels, evening gowns and dinner jackets.
Belmond’s seven-night Grand Tour (from €4,774 (£4,196); belmond.com) takes guests around any number of its legendary hotels, predominantly in Italy – such as Venice’s Cipriani or the Villa San Michele on the edge of Florence. In France, boutique hotel group Airelles has devised a road trip around three five-star hotels in Provence (from £3,125 for three nights; airelles.com).
And how might those young aristocrats travel today? Tootling around Europe in an Aston Martin or a Ferrari, perhaps; Ultimate Driving Tours’ selfdrive supercar holidays – in Tuscany, Provence, the Swiss Alps or Bavaria – are aimed at couples and mapped out by locals, with accommodation in top hotels (from £5,250pp for five days; ultimatedrivingtours.com). Prefer to travel by train? Belmond has just launched new routes for its 1920s Venice SimplonOrient-Express, with destinations including Rome, Venice, Florence, Paris and Amsterdam, overnighting at Belmond hotels along the way.
The journey gets a contemporary twist for The Set’s Grand Tour by Eurostar around its trio of landmark properties: Café Royal in London, Lutetia in Paris and Amsterdam’s Conservatorium. In the spirit of the original, in which a chap’s Cicerone (knowledgable guide) and society connections would wangle him access to Europe’s finest cultural treasures and social events, The Set’s insiders can pull strings to get tables at hard-tobook restaurants, and arrange extraordinary experiences (nine nights from
This is romance on a grand scale, with beauty, old-school glamour and Europe’s storied richness
£10,165; thesethotels.com/thegrandtour).
Further afield, Belmond’s 10-night Best of Peru tour is a similar idea, travelling through the Andes aboard its Andean Explorer train and staying in five-star comfort at Machu Picchu.
There’s wonder closer to home, too: the nine-night Best of British trip loops around several of Britain’s leading hotels, including Beaverbrook in Surrey, the wistfully beautiful Lake District at Holbeck Ghyll (via Raymond Blanc’s Le Manoir aux Quat’Saisons for lunch), Grantley Hall in Yorkshire and the bigskied splendour of Scotland and jazz-age Gleneagles (abercrombiekent.co.uk; from £2,250pp). Suddenly a sweaty honeymoon in the tropics rather palls in comparison. This is romance on a grand scale, with old-school glamour, culture, beauty, and Europe’s storied richness.
Travel is currently subject to restrictions. See Page 2.
NO-FLY MOONS
Scotland
The romance factor here isn’t the rosepetals-on-the-bed type, it’s all in the curated, exceptional feel to it. It’s in the joy of hunting down the watercolour painting by Queen Victoria, the excitement of seeing the blown glass antler chandelier in the lobby, the comfort of tweed hot water bottles and ruby-red wing-backed chairs next to the darkest mahogany furniture. It’s like staying in a traditional hunting lodge/museum/ contemporary art gallery all rolled into one. And it’s close to the Cairngorms. Doubles from £230 (01339 720202; thefifearms.com)
VENICE SIMPLON-ORIENTEXPRESS & BELMOND HOTEL CIPRIANI
Venice, Italy
If the 1920s were the golden age of travel, then the 2020s are the dawn of “slow travel” and a trip on this train from London to Venice embodies both eras. For 2021, three new grand suites are to be unveiled, respecting the original art deco design but with added luxe touches: hand-embroidered cushions, intricate mosaics and free-flowing champagne. Double beds and en suite bathrooms come as standard. And when your slow journey does end? Check into Belmond Hotel Cipriani, one of Venice’s smartest addresses.
A night at the Cipriani and journey to London on the train costs £3,366pp (0845 077 2222; belmond.com).
AKELARRE
San Sebastian, Spain
From the sultry curves of the modern building to the lingering signature scent (an earthy potion of oak, hot whetstone and herbs), everything here is considered. Bedrooms have a lofty, apartmentstyle feel, with a steel spiral staircase. Black Poltrona Frau armchairs and Cassina marble tables work well with the slate-grey exterior and the glass-fronted
terraces look out onto either the Bay of Biscay or the Basque landscape. But it’s the food that is the real draw. The now three-Michelin-starred restaurant by Pedro Subijana actually came long before the hotel, so you’re in for a treat.
Doubles from £275 (0034 943 311 208; akelarre.net )
ADARE MANOR
Ireland
There’s a reason Kim and Kanye chose Ireland for their honeymoon and it’s to do with the fairy-tale choice of accommodation: the enormous manor houses, the lavishly restored castles. Adare Manor is a little (or a lot) of both. Not
only is it Disney-perfect in its architecture and details (gothic-style window arches, shimmering chandeliers, tooheavy-to-move gilded drapery), it’s got the only La Mer spa in the UK and Ireland, the first Michelin-starred restaurant in Co Limerick and a roll call of activities that would take weeks to get through: fishing, archery, clay pigeon shooting, falconry – the list goes on. Doubles from £235 (00353 61 605 200; adaremanor.com)
HOTEL LOU PINET
St Tropez, France
St Tropez is stuffed with chichi grandes dames, but there’s something so exquisitely understated about Maisons Pariente’s latest French addition. Much like its Provence property, Crillon Le Brave, it has that difficult-to-engineer quality of being superbly polished, but supremely laid-back. Everyone is drawn to the emerald-green pool, the scent of lavender from the gardens in the air. Although the city in all its glamorous glory is just beyond the walls, people would rather while away the day here, Aperol spritz in hand, until lanterns are lit for supper at Riccardo Giraudi’s legendary beefbar. Doubles from £389 (0033 4 94 97 04 37; loupinet.com)
Travel is currently subject to restrictions. See Page 2.