Travel: The best small hotels
Fiona Duncan
I’m not one for slick bubbles of obvious luxury that bear little relation to their locations and could be anywhere. Instead, it’s always personally run, characterful places, ones with integrity and a bit of soul, that stick in the mind.
I love different hotels for different reasons. Call me strange, but top of my list are hotels that don’t change if they don’t need to because they are perfectly all right as they are. Take Howtown Hotel in Cumbria. My son and his girlfriend didn’t get it at all, the idiots, when I took them there recently. But I adore it, set back from the shores of Ullswater and set back in time.
Jacqui Baldry has run Howtown for more than half a century. She’s never had a computer; when you telephone for a room, you are asked to confirm in writing; she then acknowledges by hand. It may be old-fashioned (too oldfashioned for Fergus and Flick), but there’s nothing hair-shirt about it.
Warmly lit, red-carpeted corridors, lined by dozens of watercolours and prints, lead to the twelve bedrooms, fresh, spacious and neat as a pin, with wonderful views. No newfangled bath products (bring your own shampoo) but there’s a bar of good old Imperial Leather soap, plentiful hot water for the bath and large towels. At 7pm, a gong sounds for dinner in the duck-egg-blue dining room, gleaming with silver cutlery. At 8am, tea and biscuits are brought to your room.
Sounds regimented? Not a bit. To my mind, this is the warmest, kindest hotel in the world (doubles from £208 per night, including breakfast and
dinner; 017684 86514, howtown-hotel. com).
The problem with most British hotels is that, unlike Howtown, they keep changing hands. I love Italian hotels because they don’t, by and large. They pass from one generation to the next, and they contain that invaluable asset: the twinkly-eyed, middle-aged or even elderly waiter who is proud of his job.
The Hotel Santa Caterina, on the Amalfi Coast, is positively heaving with them. Opened in 1904 by Amalfi’s mayor and doctor and filled with family furniture, it is now run by the fourth generation, with exceptional service from devoted, long-standing local staff.
A kiss on the hand from the doorman; a spot-on joke from the head waiter; names remembered by all – warmth and professionalism combined. Add to that the best seaside set-up on the coast (few hotels here have direct sea access), with a stay-all-day beach club that’s strictly reserved for hotel guests, and a mix of warmth, glamour and professionalism, and you have a hotel one longs to return to – or at least I do (doubles from £320; 0039 089 871012, hotelsantacaterina.it).
Some people have a wonderful flair for design. When they showcase that flair in a hotel that’s as homely and welcoming as it’s a feast for the eyes, it feels like a real treat to be there. Take Jean Michel Ruis. In cobbled, hilltop Santa Teresa, the Rio de Janeiro bairro of choice for the boho chic, you’ll find his sevenbedroom Mama Ruisa, a serene colonial mansion with wooden floors, high ceilings and French windows on to a wraparound balcony with views of the city and Guanabara Bay that take your breath away. A pair of striking tangerine sofas dominate the sleek sitting room, where there are also Sixties armchairs by Sérgio Rodrigues and a Fardos sofa by Ricardo Fasanello, photography by Vik Muniz, a collection of rare 19th-century topographical illustrations of Rio, and wonderfully kitsch religious icons.
As for the bedrooms, they are more understated but equally stylish, and recall Jean Cocteau, Colette, Josephine Baker and Maria Callas in photographs, books and memorabilia.
Breakfast – white linen, silver teapots, tropical fruits, homemade jams – is served at tables for two on each private balcony. Embedded in a swathe of lawn is a lovely pool (doubles from £156 including breakfast; 00 55 21 22 10 06 31, mamaruisa.com).
I’m terribly partial to island hotels – ones that have islands to themselves, that is. We even have one in the UK: the Isle of Eriska Hotel, where a wonderfully rumbly old bridge connects mainland Argyll to little Eriska and its Scots Baronial mansion. It’s very comfortable and there’s a nine-hole golf course and a leisure centre but, above all, it’s the island itself, with seals and otters and dreamlike views, that lingers in the memory (doubles from £295 including breakfast; 01631 720371, eriska-hotel.co.uk).
Locanda Cipriani on Torcello is another island gem. I have never done anything more romantic than arrive in Venice on the Orient Express at sunset, and then take a (very expensive) private boat across the lagoon to Torcello, where all that remains of that cradle of the Venetian civilisation are two serenely beautiful religious buildings.
When the tourists drift home, Torcello’s magic takes hold, and the handful of guests at the Locanda Cipriani are there to share the privilege.
The inn, opened in 1934 by Giuseppe Cipriani and still in the family, has six rooms, homely yet sophisticated. Hemingway wrote much of Across the River and Into the Trees there – standing up, as was his practice (doubles from £210 including breakfast; 00 39 041 730150, locandacipriani.com).
For a more exotic island paradise, I’d head to the Quirimbas Archipelago off Mozambique, and the Azura on tiny, jewel-like Quilalea Island, filled with frangipani, massive baobab trees and exotic birds and ringed by beaches and rocky bays.
The hotel, the island’s only habitation, has just nine stylish and luxurious villas for guests who dine, pied dans l’eau, at tables dotted along the beach. Dhowsailing at sunset, kayaking in the mangroves, trips to nearby Ibo Island and treatments in the African Spa are all on the menu. But Azura’s greatest asset is the superb snorkelling and diving right there off the heavenly beach in front of the hotel (doubles from £1,170 all inclusive; 00 27 11 467 0907, azuraretreats.com).
Time warps, proper waiters,