Putting on the the Ritz - world's best hotel experiences - A Guide to Pleasure

National Review, April 18, 1994 by Taki Theodoracopulos

THEY SAY that a good hotel is like a good woman, reliable, comfortable, and easy to live with. But a great hotel is like a great woman. It is elegant, sexy, and mysterious, and leaves one in awe. There are millions of good hotels in this crowded world of ours; picking ten great ones among them is by nature extremely subjective. It is like picking the ten best of the gentler sex.

So I have decided to go by the kind of mood hotels have put me in during my various peregrinations these last forty years. Here we go:

I have spent 35 winters at the Palace Hotel in Gstaad, which makes its greatness pretty obvious. It is a deluxe fake castle, reminiscent of the follies of Ludwig of Bavaria, a rococo delight with a bit of Disney thrown in. The service is impeccable and very friendly, the food a gourmet's dream. The staff outnumber the clientele by 3 to 1, while the prices--thanks to the powerful Swiss franc--will make even a Saudi sheik blanch. The Palace has been pretty much owned by the Scherz family throughout its life--it was built in 1913--and it has had most of the crowned and uncrowned heads of Europe as clients at one time or another. The greatest backgammon game ever took place in its lobby-bar throughout the Sixties and Seventies, but it came to an inglorious end when new and dubious money infiltrated it. Some of the original punters were Sir James Goldsmith, Ted Bassett, John Zographos (whose uncle was the only man to actually break the bank in Monte Carlo), golfer Bobby Sweeny, and yours truly. But it's the service that makes the Palace unsurpassed--that, plus the majestic landscape it faces.

Having lived in England most of my adult life, I could not fail to name at least one London hotel among the best. And however close the contest, the Connaught wins, the main reason being that it has managed to retain the elegance and dignity of a bygone era, while providing all modern conveniences. It has the feel of a great private house, and, best of all, it prohibits track suits in the lobby and rock music in the rooms. Amen. The Connaught Grill is mahogany-paneled and offers gastronomy at its English best.

Picking the Ritz in Paris was a damn closer-run thing than the Battle of Waterloo. The City of Light is littered with grand hotels and great little ones. But the Ritz wins in the end because of its history, its perfect modernization, and the fact that it was there that I began my career as a gentleman of leisure 35 years ago. In Reinaldo Herrera Sr.'s suite, to be exact. This was the large apartment that Love in the Afternoon, starring Gary Cooper and Audrey Hepburn, was filmed in, and it was Herrera Sr.'s abode whenever he was in Paris. It was at a cocktail party there that he introduced me to a few of his younger friends, and presto--it was the start of a beautiful friendship with the city as well as with the Ritz. Last year I spent several evenings in the Ritz nightclub and it was like being in a time machine. Mind you, the Hemingway Bar alone, now full of corporate types looking for Papa, makes the hotel qualify, and the only thing I regret is that my friend Irwin Shaw is no longer around. I used to meet with him there and drink a lot, but not to Papa's memory. Shaw was not a fan.

As a Greek, and a former hotel owner to boot, I should include at least one Hellenic inn, but I won't because I'm being honest. The best Greek hotels do not compare with the worst in any major city elsewhere in Europe, modern Greeks having got used to ripping foreigners off, not serving them. Instead, I will propose a Turkish one, the Istanbul Kempinski, which in itself is rather a commercial hotel, but oh, what a setting! Situated right on the shores of the Bosporus on the European side of Istanbul--sorry: Constantinople-the hotel is linked by arcades to the seventeenth-century Ciragan Palace, where the last sultan of Turkey resided. In fact, one can almost feel the harem that once was, and imagination is everything when it comes to romance.

I imagine Heaven to be a place where there are no Hollywood types. The Ritz in Madrid, situated across from the Prado, goes me one better: it permits no actors whatsoever, and many other sorts are also barred. Suffice it to say that this grandest of the grand is also the bravest of the brave. The Marshall Ney of hotels. It recommends the nearby Palace to the great unwanted. Gentlemen send their mistresses to stay at the Palace, while they get spoiled at the Ritz with their wives. Leave it to the proudest people in Europe to get this right.

Going westward, in the Big Apple, the Carlyle Hotel stands head and shoulders above the rest. Service, once again, is the secret. The Carlyle provides a 2 to 1 ratio of staff to clientele, and for the U.S. it is a very good staff indeed. (Service is not the American strong point.) I lived in the Carlyle for many years, and both my children were born there. In fact my daughter, when five years of age, used to go and sign for some ready cash from the cashier. She continues the practice today, age eighteen.