Luxury Travel

Arrival in Poreč: Bentleys, Marble and a Very Good First Impression

There is a particular moment on any holiday when you know, with total certainty, that you are going to be fine. Mine came approximately eleven seconds after arriving at the Pical Resort, Valamar Collection in Poreč, when I clocked a Bentley Continental GT, a Ferrari and a Lamborghini Urus parked outside the entrance like a pair of expensive bookends. This, I thought, is no ordinary family resort. Quelle surprise.

Arrival: The Audi A5 S Line and the Finest Fifty Yards in Black Tie

The Tour: Le Touquet, a chateau in Fontainebleau, Chateau de Chambord, Chaumont-sur-Loire

The queue for LeShuttle's Flexiplus lounge told its own story. McLarens, Ferraris, Lamborghinis — you name them, they were there, idling politely in line like schoolboys waiting for the tuck shop to open, their owners doing that studied nonchalance that only a man leaning against half a million pounds of carbon fibre can attempt.

Arriving at Naturhotel Forsthofgut feels like stepping into a perfectly balanced world  - one where the warmth of a family-run retreat meets the refined elegance of a five-star hotel. Nestled at the foot of the Asitz Mountain in Leogang, it’s the kind of place where the air carries the scent of pine and wood, mingling with the aroma of freshly baked bread in the morning, and where hospitality is more than just a service; it’s second nature.

“Welcome to the City of Dreams Mediterranean” was the greeting from the hotel doorman as he opened the gold-rimmed glass entrance ushering us into a grandiose, marbled and voluminous lobby; this type of glamour, style and pizazz is usually associated with cities like Dubai, Hong Kong or Miami, yet here we were on the eastern periphery of Limassol on the beautiful island of Cyprus.

I mention the Maldives and already you are conjuring up a far away paradise, powder white sandy beaches, crystal clear turquoise sea and the bluest of blue skies you have ever set your eyes on. Yes certainly it is paradise but what sets the Sun Siyam resort group apart from the others is the staff. The minute you arrive the staff greet you with the words “welcome home”, well if your home is heaven you have returned. 

An island perfectly suited to a geologist, a poet or indeed an artist! For Lanzarote has such an awe-inspiring setting: dramatic, expansive, picturesque and welcoming. This island of cacti and volcanoes, though highly individual, summoned to me the glories of other lands. The long sweeping landscape, punctuated with the occasional finca, evoked the beautiful expanse of Andalusia. The straight, low and narrow back streets of habitation with those of Colombia. The aridity and jagged landscape of the Sahara with which it is globally parallel.

Kris Griffiths reports on an extraordinary hotel in northern Michigan and its symbiotic relationship with a 1980 cult film, and how he’s waited over 30 years to visit – the same weekend hundreds of other fans of the film annually do too…
 

What fun sometimes merely to fly and flop. To be just 20 minutes from a small airport like Olbia. To see out over a wide expanse and lie under the great globe of unblemished sky that’s simply serene. To witness the mesmerically azure blue sea along miles upon miles of untrammelled coastline.

Flock to this Eternal City, this ‘urbs sacra’ for the 2025 Jubilee Year of Hope, the first ordinary jubilee since the Great Jubilee of 2000. Celebrate a special year of grace as the jubilee begins just before Christmas to end on the Epiphany next year. For the papacy gives the Jubilee a spiritual meaning in granting the remission of the temporal punishment of sins for all pilgrims who visit Rome during this specific year. The most exciting and well-known rite is the opening of the Holy Door (open only during the jubilee year): a symbolic re-enactment of the opening of the gates of Heaven.