I’ve stayed in many London luxury historic hotels, boutique hotels and small rooms but my first visit to the Great Northern Hotel London melded all of my past experiences into one luxury hotel award stay. The original London railway hotel first opened in 1853 and has been restored with such luxury […]
After laughing outside of The Elephant Camp tent by the sheer size and realizing that my first night in Botswana was an actual tent you buy in the store – I tried to be a bit more calm with the guided tour of my room at this boutique luxury camp […]
If my vacation to Malta had started at the Kempinski Gozo, I wouldn’t have fractured my foot, my time on the island and subsequent travels would have been vastly changed as well as my relationships. After a nightmare Airbnb experience, we left early (FLED or ESCAPED is a better term) […]
It seemed silly to fly home after four days in Iceland when I had the option of the “stopover” fare on Icelandair that could allow me to spend time in London. In order to make London work, I remembered that I opened up the Hyatt credit card earlier in the […]
On my first visit to The Westin Sydney many years ago, I got stuck in the elevator. No, there wasn’t an electrical or mechanical problem, it was a dumb “only Sue” reason – I couldn’t get my keycard to work in the slot to press my floor. I tried a […]
It has taken me years of trial and error to fall in love with my London hotels and to reconcile the fact that I am forgoing thousands of points as I shun the US Chain hotels. Finding a level of comfort in the small hotels and their neighborhoods has made […]
Staying in Paris for five days with my niece, I could have easily stayed at one hotel the entire time, however, I was torn between two equally interesting boutique hotels. So I decided to stay at both as it gave us an excuse to explore two very different arrondissements. We […]
Arriving in Toronto as I have so many times in the past (usually for the Toronto International Film Festival this time for TBEX), a switch flipped and i went into auto mode – going through immigration, stopping at the ATM and then purchasing my shuttle bus ticket to the city. […]
Nothing about my “living like Oprah without her money” vacation was cheap. Despite the pay for 2 nights, get the 3rd free promo, the Peninsula Chicago was still an expensive stay but worth every penny! I wasn’t concerned that I was forgoing points by staying here, I wanted to treat […]
I often wonder if “it’s just me” with the crazy attention to detail when I visit and/or stay at hotels around the world. It’s hard to turn off my inner “hotel inspector” when I travel for vacation…for me. I’m constantly running through my due diligence checklist for hotels and I […]