The house in which we are staying has been converted from a series of linked agricultural buildings. From the outside it still looks like a huge stone barn, and only the Velux windows right up near the apex of the roof suggest that it is now a residential building. (Albeit one that is still a work in progress.)

Inside is a warren of room and stairs on different levels, all having been carved out of the roof space, various storage spaces and sheds. We ate lunch today in the old laiterie, or milking parlour, and A&T are staying in the converted pigeonerie attached to the house.

There are books everywhere. And I really do mean everywhere: there are shelves in the bedrooms and in the laiterie as well as in the main living room. Another reason why I love it here.

Like my parent’s converted farmhouse in the English countryside, this building is only one room deep, and the living room has French windows into the courtyard, where we eat and hang out.

This swing seat had my name on it from the moment I walked into the courtyard:

When not curled up in there with a not improving book, I have been writing on the end of this table, looking over the field, and sheltered from the 32C/90F temperatures.

Whilst avoiding the wasps, who are nesting somewhere near the swimming pool. This is a guêpe trap. Rather beautiful, considering its purpose is mass guêpe anihilation.

The guêpe proliferation is partly explained by the fruit trees which are everywhere, heavy with pears, mirabelles, Reine Claudes (greengages), Bramleys (imported by Mr B as cookers don’t grow in France), and peaches, and which I am eyeing beadily with thoughts of cake & tart swirling round my brain.

And, the final sign that I am acclimatising. Espadrilles.

(EUR6 from the local Hyper.)

There is no better was to get around Paris than via Vélib. One of the first street bikes schemes, Vélib is the largest of its kind in the world, in no small part due to its ease of use. As long as you have a credit or debit card, you can be signed up in a matter of minutes at any of the street locations, and a bike is free to use under 30 minutes.  I paid 1€ for a day’s sub, and a couple of euros for my two hr ride.

I got into Paris at 4pm and, by the time I had checked into the Hôtel de Vendôme, unpacked and shot a video in my room, the day was pretty much done. So, given that all my Parisian friends are away for August, & that it was a beautiful summer evening, I figured I would hire a Vélib and bike around the city centre. (There’s a Vélib stand every 300 metres, and one just next to my hotel.) I whizzed up to Opéra and took a pitstop into Zara when I saw it was still open at 730pm, and ended up with this skirt. I didn’t feel  at all stupid buying a floor length, black crepe skirt when it was 30C outside, no, not at all.

I stuffed my shopping into my pannier, and continued on my way east.

Then took a right over the Pont Neuf,

and a right onto the Rive Droite along the Quai Conti, which changes names several times as it runs past the Beaux-Arts, the Musée d’Orsay & the Assemblée Nationale.

Then, imagine my horror when I took an un-thinking right off the Quai Anatole France cycle lane onto a bridge, realised too late that it was the Pont de la Concorde, and saw the Place de la Concorde looming up in front of me.

I stopped on the bridge to admire the view over the Seine,

whilst formulating a not-dying-under-the-wheels-of-a-psychotic-Parisian-cabdriver-whilst-cycling-around-Paris’-most-notoriously-kamikaze-roundabout plan.

Normally I wave at the Chevaux de Marly from my passing taxi in honour of Sigi in Nancy Mitford’s The Blessing, who climbs up to ride them, but I was rigid with fear at the thought of cycling through the Place. So I didn’t. I copped out and wound my way around the pedestrianised edge, past the entrance to the Jeu de Paume & the Tuileries, cutting onto the Rue de Rivoli, and on up to the Rue de Saint-Honoré towards the Hôtel de Vendôme.

As I crossed the Rue Cambon, I reversed to take a sneaky detour the wrong way up the one-way street to pay homage to Coco:

And then continued on my way to the Hôtel de Vendôme to dump my shopping before heading to a brasserie (on a new Vélib, to take advantage of the 30 min free period) to eat an omelette frites, which I washed down with a coupe (de Champagne) to celebrate my summer holiday freedom.

Then another Vélib home down past the Louvre on the Rue de Rivoli. This was the Hôtel de Vendôme from the Rue de Castiglione as I arrived back around 10pm:

And so to bed with a not-improving novel.

LLG was a guest of the Hôtel de Vendôme

I adore swimming outdoors, in rivers, ponds and the sea given a preference, although the odd Olympic swimming pool will also do nicely. I am also very partial to the idea of a swimming pool that thinks it’s a pond. And that’s another reason why I loved The Scarlet in Cornwall. Their chemical-free outdoor swimming pool is filtered by reeds with a huge granite diving stone.

Perched over Mawgan Porth beach, with the most extraordinary views, I think it is the most exciting pool I have ever seen. And that’s from a girl who never thought she would be swayed from her love of Hampstead Heath Ladies Pond.

As one gingerly walks down the steps, the cold grabs all conscious thoughts, and all you can do is launch yourself forth, holding your breath, striking out for the end, keeping on going until you either warm up, or become numb. Either way it is invigorating.

Although I don’t like the sensation of cold kneecaps, which is quite odd. Then again if one does decide to swim in a pool that is just 19C (66F), I think cold kneecaps come as standard.

It must be said that getting out and swaddling oneself in a thick, warm cotton dressing gown is almost as pleasurable as scything through the water.

My photos of the hotel & a short film of my room are here.

LLG & lil’sis were guests of The Scarlet

I stay in a lot of hotels. But rarely do I think: I’d like to move into the room in which I am sleeping. However I would make an exception for the suite in which I spent the last night of my stay in Barcelona: the Hotel ME Barcelona.  But, although it’s part of the huge Melia chain, it’s no cookie cutter outfit. There are just four ME lifestyle hotels, two in Mexico: Cabo & Cancun, and two in Spain: Madrid & Barcelona. I’m normally very dubious about lifestyle hotels that try to sell you a philosophy.  All I want from a hotel is a good bed, calm, aesthetics that don’t give me a headache and, most of all, good service.

The ME Barcelona somehow manages to transcend its stylish selling point, and become more than the sum of its parts.

The public spaces are attractive and smell delicious, thanks to a custom blended room fragrance.  There’s a  compact & refreshing swimming pool half way up the side of the hotel, set in a bar terrace, and surrounded by comfortable cabanas, which gets busy at night with a crowd of very attractive locals, (as opposed to shorts & sandal-clad tourists.)
That’s because it’s not in tourist-central Barcelona, but maybe four or five stops from Placa de Catalunya, away from the madding crowds and slap bang in Barcelona’s hottest upcoming neighbourhood Poblenou, (which I wrote about here.)

I loved the spectacular rooftop bar (below), with views over all of Barcelona, and peeked into the restaurant (it has serious gastronomic leanings in a great space, but I didn’t eat there.) The night I stayed Chanel  were hosting a perfume launch and there were suitably beautiful people wafting about the public spaces. And the staff. I haven’t mentioned how utterly charming everyone with whom I came into contact.

And then my suite. Oh my suite was just wonderful. From the Eames chair to the Wii, everything looked great, worked better. My bed was a cloud, the bath drew in seconds, the pillows were just right and the towels soft. There was a vast dressing room, a marvellous view to the sea, a chaise with a knitted throw to warm my knees, and an iPod playing funk. And enough space to swing an entire family of cats. And their kittens. There wasn’t a single thing I would have changed. (And I truly am the picky guest from hell after twelve years of hotel reviewing.)

I spent most of my stay on that chaise above, writing copy & being distracted by the view. That’s when I wasn’t lolling on the bed, luxuriating in an Aveda bubble bath, swimming lengths in the pool, or eating the most ginmorous and utterly scrumptious breakfast from the vast, vast buffet.

And here’s the short video I shot of my room. Do look: the photos can’t possibly do it’s fabulous-ness justice.

More of my photos of the hotel here.

LLG was a guest of the Hotel ME Barcelona

When I was in Madrid back in May, I ate in a fantastic re-imagining of a traditional tapas joint, Bar Tomate (which I wrote about here). In a total coincidence, the excellent Hotel Omm where Miss P & I stayed in Barcelona two weeks ago is also owned by the same restaurant & hotel group, Grupo Tragaluz.

When the delightful publicist for the Hotel Omm clocked that Miss P & I were of a gourmand gourmet disposition (we eat & drink like gannets), she sent us off to meet the manager & have lunch at Barcelona’s Bar Lobo, Bar Tomate’s sister restaurant, down off the Ramblas in the El Raval area of the city (translation: within spitting distance of all the tourist hot spots.)

The ground floor is a  light, bright, double height room, with an open kitchen. The tables are clothless, with pots of herbs & plenty of space.  There’s an outside terrace, but our pale, northern European bodies couldn’t take the heat, so we sat in a sunny indoors corner and watched a fearsomely good-looking man feed his toddler tapas,  *hearts melting*, whilst diners of all ages wandered in and out, and plates of delectable food wafted past our noses.

The menu roves around: there are super-trad tapas for those who don’t like to stray from the classics, like the plate of delectable sea salt scattered pimientos padron I scarfed in seconds (below right), and modern tapas of seared tuna with guacamole (below left) & houmous with flat bread for those that do (above right). I’m not sure where the textbook tempura asparagus with Romanesco sauce (above left) fits in, but it took roughly seconds for it to disappear off the plate and into my mouth.

Here’s the delicious menu in full:

Bar Lobo. C/ Pintor Fortuny 3, 08002 Barcelona.
+34934815346
barlobo@groupotragaluz.com

LLG & Miss P were deliriously happy guests of Bar Lobo

Whilst I was hunkered down in the Hotel InterContinental in Madrid, trying to persuade myself I wasn’t sick, I went for an exploratory tour of the hotel. I may not have been able to walk very far, but hotels have elevators and lovely tho my room was, the appeal of CNN & BBC World had started to pale after 24hrs.

I should admit here that I am a hotel geek. All those years of reviewing hotels means there is little I enjoy more when abroad than having a good poke around a hotel’s nether regions. And, in this case, its upper regions too. Because the InterContinental Madrid has a Royal Suite of such grandeur that it would have been a crying shame not to have investigated it properly.

At 400 square metres, my Manhattan apartment would have fitted into the master bedroom alone. Of course that’s not all there is: the master bedroom has its own living area and en-suite bathroom and there are two further bedrooms. And in case you thought that was sufficient, think again: there is also a main living room, dining room, private kitchenette and additional bathroom.

But the piece de resistance is a large outdoor terrace overlooking the Paseo de la Castellana. It’s quite the most beautiful space for an outdoor supper party, far away from the madding crowd. I know the suite is not exactly an everyday place to stay, but we can all dream…

LLG was a guest of the Hotel InterContinental Madrid

Lil’sis & I threw a small garden party at her London flat this past Saturday to celebrate (early) her birthday.

I’m a big fan of proper invitations, but time restrictions precluded sending them out this time, so I turned to the next best thing: Paperless Post.

Based in America, lots of companies  -  & friends — that I know in Manhattan use Paperless Post instead of snail mail for invitations to events or parties. Instead of forking out for costly paper invitations and USPS stamps, a mere $15 buys you 300 Paperless Post stamps (which includes the costs of the infinitely customisable invitations themselves). The site takes UK credit cards.

The company was founded in 2008 by a brother and sister from New York City who “believe that aesthetics and efficiency can go hand in hand”. The brash eVite site is a million miles away from the chic philosophy behind Paperless Post: there are no external advertisers, and the look of the invitations on offer is more Smythson than Staples.

It took lil’sis & I about 30 minutes to come up with a design from the host of options available. Eschewing the invitation formats, we just chose a green background we liked, added a logo from the many on offer — the butterfly, chose a typeface & colour for it,  & added our copy. There is even an option to choose (for an extra fee) a pretty coloured liner for the envelope that opens on your screen to reveal the invitation.

The system is set up so that you can easily insert  a list of email names taken from the To: box on your email, and provides comprehensive tracking. An icon appears when a recipient opens an email, and again when they either accept or decline. You can send out messages & updates to your invitees, & the invitation details are easily downloaded by the recipient into Outlook.

I’ve also taken to using Paperless Post to send thank you cards for work breakfasts & lunches when I haven’t got a bricks & mortar address for a publicist, or when time is of the essence.

The New York Times covered the company with admirable brevity here.

If your idea of an English seaside hotel is stuck firmly in the mould of a 1930s south coast Grand Hotel, then The Scarlet may come as a surprise. Not least because it is perched on a cliff over the Atlantic on the north Cornish coast, with a glorious view over its wonderful natural reedbed pool to the yellow sands of Mawgan Porth.

It is thoroughly modern in every sense of the word. From its much-vaunted ecological sensibilities to its open bathrooms,  the purpose built hotel challenges traditional hotel design at every turn.

There are five types of room:  Just Right, Generous, Spacious, Unique, and Indulgent. Accessed via the cloister garden, our huge Unique room, with its big double bed & standalone bath at its foot, was one of four with a beautiful private terrace garden filled with agapanthus & hydrangeas. In the corner of the room, next to the curved open shower was  a spiral staircase up to our private roof top pod room, containing a vast & exceedingly comfortable bean bag positioned under an Eileen Grey floor lamp. The view is  spectacular: over the clever eco sea thrift-covered flat roof to the Atlantic ocean and endless sky. It’s a perfect place to gaze & dream.

(It would also be a perfect place to write, but there is no desk or wi-fi up there, so this writer spent a little too much time staring at a wall in the bedroom below, cabled into the room’s desk internet point, whilst her sister lolled on the lovely beanbag.)

Above: our personal terrace with two chaises for sunbathing, and the seating area in our room.
Below: some of the hotel’s public spaces

Above: the sun-drenched upper terrace, overlooking the bay. The living room.
And here is the video I shot in our Unique room:

More of my photos of The Scarlet here

http://scarlethotel.co.uk

LLG was a guest of The Scarlet

Maybe eight years ago Emma & I flew to Ibiza on a whim: she went to Ibiza Yoga to do bend & contort, & I stayed down the road. (I’ve never been a fan of the spend eye-watering sums on yoga holidays and be expected to eat brown food & stay in ropey huts with communal showers business model.) The high point of the holiday was discovering Benirras Beach in the north of the islands, now quite possibly one of my favourite beaches in the world.

At that point I was still phobic about seaweed, swimming in cold water,  touching bottom in the water & the murk that lurks below. I refused to swim. Emma wasn’t having any of it and in her best sergeant major manner got me in the water.

Revelation.

And since then we have swum around the world in water so cold I’ve thought my toes would fall off. Most notably, on a hen weekend to Barcelona some six years ago, we hived ourselves off from the rest of the group who had gone to the beach and headed instead to Montjuïc, the large hill that overlooks the western side of the city.

First to the Fundació Joan Miró, and then to a swimming pool I read about in some long defunct guidebook. It promised an Olympic Sports Complex, but gave little details.

After a ten minute trek in the midday sun along the road that runs around the perimeter of the hill, we passed the Olympic Stadium. Still no swimming pool. But then, a long low building loomed up behind some unedifying metal gates.

And there it was. The Piscines Bernat Picornell: one of Barcelona’s two Olympic swimming pools. For just 5 euros anyone can swim there. It’s blissful as no tourists ever visit — it’s pretty much all Spaniards, there’s no music or hot dog stands, just basic white plastic sun loungers. It’s no use for kids that can’t swim, so there’s relatively little frolicking — just wonderful swimming in refreshing unheated water. For a Londoner, whose only outdoor pool options are the lidos, full of shrieking infants & stroppy teens, this is a paradise for swimmers. (The pool is 50 x 25 m.)

Opened in 1970 for the European Aquatics Championships, the complex was remodelled and modernised for the Olympic Games in Barcelona in 1992. Since then it has hosted several Spanish and Catalan swimming championships as well as the synchronized swimming events for the 2003 World Aquatics Championships. (wiki)

Of the three pools, I haven’t braved the heated indoor pool - the point, after all, is to be able to swim proper lengths in the glorious Barcelona sunshine. (When Miss P & I visited last Monday the diving pool was temporarily closed.)

I recommend doing as we did, and just shoving a swimsuit, suntan lotion & a sarong in your handbag, so you can go for a swim in the middle of a day of sightseeing. It’s hot enough that you can just lie on a lounger to dry off,  (but there are shaded overhangs too (above), and showers indoors if you need. You can walk there from the Montjuic Funicular, but a cab all the way from El Born up the hill only cost us EUR8.

It´s open from  1100 — 18.30 hrs, with last entry at 17.30 hrs.
Adult: 5,35 €, Children (6 –14yrs): 3,70 € (No children under 6)
Av. de l’Estadi 30, Barcelona, Spain, 08038 www.picornell.cat

I also wanted to add that as I wrote this morning, reminiscing in my head about all the adventures Emma & I have had all over the world, she emailed me completely out of the blue. Extraordinary. That kind of friend-connected-ness is joyful. Altho I had to remind her that it was she who got me swimming outdoors, because she now associates me with swimming EVERYWHERE. As does Ayla who, when I commented that the sea in Barcelona was cold last week, replied that if I found it cold there must have been penguins & icebergs floating around me. Funny how we can change so much.

ADDENDUM: This is NOT the pool where Kylie shot her video for Slow. For that you’ll need to visit the Piscina Municipal de Montjuïc, at the other end of the road. It has two swimming pools: a pool for diving and a 25m outdoor pool. It hosted the diving events and the water polo preliminaries for the 1992 Summer Olympics. Also equally charming. And it also has a view over Barcelona.

Tomorrow morning I fly to Barcelona for five days. I’m mixing work & pleasure, in perfect proportions. Late Sunday one of my closest friends Miss P arrives from London, having locked her baby & husband under the stairs, and we will spend two nights at the Hotel Omm, as recommended by hotel & restaurant expert extraordinaire Sophie Dening. It looks to be the last word in urban chic, so I’m very glad to have my new Tallulah & Hope kaftan in which to swan around by the rooftop pool.

On Tuesday we decamp to the new-ish & utterly extraordinary looking W hotel, down on the waterfront, right next to San Sebastia beach. We intend to investigate this pool in some depth.

There I am to be the guest of Value Retail — operator of the Chic Outlet Shopping Villages, owners of Bicester Village (which I wrote about here) and, most importantly for this trip, La Roca Village just outside Barcelona. (They’ve appointed Jade Jagger as their new ambassador). So, there will be a little light shopping at La Roca on Tuesday and then, on Wednesday night, there’s a party at a brand new beach club thrown by Value Retail and Conde Nast Traveler Spain to celebrate the launch of The Chic Guide to Europe.