The Aman Spa at The Connaught review

Queen of Retreats | 20 Aug 2015

The quick read: The Aman Spa is in (arguably) London’s premier hotel in swanky Mayfair. You come to this subterranean beauty when you want to swap stressy city life, noise and buzz for tranquility, spiritual sustenance and top-notch treatments. It’s very ‘om’, with an elegant twist – from the second a staff member glides to your side to offer you a steaming ceramic bowl of lemongrass or ginger tea until you leave the serene, Asian-style treatment room. There’s a 60-metre swimming pool with a cascading water wall, a steam room with twinkling lights, crystals and multi-buhzillionaires letting off steam, plus five treatment rooms. You leave a few hours later feeling as though you’ve had a mini holiday.

• Health, Beauty & Spa

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Learn how the internet works: How a technophobe went from digital dinosaur to world wide whizz

High50 | 16 Jul 2015

I’m a technological dinosaur. In my world, tweeting involves sparrows; a mouse mat is only important when there’s a marsupial involved; and icons are of little significance unless they’re slebs granting me exclusive interviews about their upcoming transgender ops.

• Culture

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Ham Yard Hotel

Our Man on the Ground | 30 Jun 2015

Tim and Kit Kemp have recently created their eighth London hotel, Ham Yard. And it’s barmy – in the nicest possible way – with décor that’s stylishly zany and elegantly nuts.

• Travel: Europe/ Africa

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Is This the World’s Most Expensive Hair?

Huffington Post | 9 Jun 2015

Hair royalty, hair-raiser — he’s been called many things. One thing’s for sure — hairdresser Daniel Galvin Jr knows a thing to two when it comes to tresses. And now he’s offering a mobile hairdressing service. Hair on Bikes. Like meals on wheels. Only think cut ‘n’ colour delivered to your home or office. That is to say, two men on a bike come to do your hair chez vous. Daniel and his top snipper, Joseph Bilton. They’re the only duo in London offering such a service.

• Health, Beauty & Spa,
• Shopping & Fashion

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The cure at Vivamayr Altaussee

The Luxury Channel | 5 Jun 2015

The talk en route to the resort is scary. ‘They’ll put us on a diet of 600 calories a day.’ ‘You’ll be given so much Epsom salts you’ll need Pampers.’ Such is the speculation among journalists on the way to the VivaMayr Resort Altaussee, the spanking new wellness and health clinic on the shores of Lake Altaussee in Liezen, Austria.

• Health, Beauty & Spa,
• Travel: Europe/ Africa

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Tatler Spa Guide 2015 – Monici delle Terre Nere

Tatler | 14 May 2015

Mount Etna blows its top theatrically behind, the Ionian Sea twinkles in front and clementine groves jostle for space with fig trees on this blissfully stylish organic estate.

• Health, Beauty & Spa

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Tatler Spa Guide 2015 – Uma by COMO, Paro, Bhutan

Tatler | 14 May 2015

You won’t find a spa with a more peaceful view. The snow-capped Himalayas and the glacial Mo Chu river gushing past are a sight to ease a troubled mind like no treatment ever could. The hotel is gorgeous, and the spa simple – just two buildings and a tiny menu that makes decision-making a cinch.

• Health, Beauty & Spa

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Playa Nicuesa Rainforest Lodge review – Eco-friendly adventure, massage and yoga in Costa Rica

Queen of Retreats | 28 Apr 2015

The Quick Read: Accessible only by boat, Playa Nicuesa is an eco lodge set in a 165-acre private reserve in Costa Rica’s Golfo Dulce region, bordered by ocean and rainforest that leads onto a national park. The location is paradisiacal – an emerald coast with jade water in which dolphins play and turtles dive. It’s one of the most biologically diverse places in the world, with lush forestry, humongous leaves, three types of monkeys, iguanas, sloths, toucans – it’s like the Oscars for wildlife. There’s yoga and massage, but really you come for the wildlife. It’s perfect for hiking, snorkeling, fishing and jungle kayaking expeditions – though you can just meditate in a hammock. With a carbon footprint so small it’s almost a paw mark, the lodge has 5 leaves – the highest award for sustainability in tourism – but deserves an entire tree.

• Health, Beauty & Spa,
• Travel: Americas

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Best women’s travel pieces

Queen of Retreats | 28 Apr 2015

What to pop into your 23 kilo baggage allowance for an adventurous healthy holiday? Mosquito net? Tent poles? Rescue Remedy? A dog-eared copy of A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush? Well possibly, but some of this gear too – it’s what worked for Caroline Phillips on her healthy holiday to Costa Rica.

• Shopping & Fashion

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Get your rocks off in Nicaragua

Country & Town House | 24 Mar 2015

I’m suspended above the ground wearing a harness. Dangling over rain forest. I’ve already signed a waiver for death, dismemberment and suchlike. Now like some hybrid of monkey and horizontal parachutist, I’m rocketing past trees, rain forest and over coffee plantations. Jumping off the zip line at ceiba trees around which 60ft. high platforms have been built – there to ready myself to take the next leg of my treetop journey. Then careering off again as howler monkeys howl in the forest.

• Travel: Americas

El Salvador: the little country that offers such a lot

Country & Town House | 24 Mar 2015

Almost nobody speaks English and we may be the country’s only tourists, as far as we can work out – which is a delight. Welcome to El Salvador. It is Central America’s least-visited country. Somewhere that has long struggled to gain tourists’ trust. A land perceived as dangerous and with gang killings, violence that has been going on since the 1990s. But if you don’t go into the shanty towns, you’re unlikely to be affected. Instead, we have a holiday in a little country with lots to offer… splendid wildlife and rich forests, colonial towns and beaches, vast mountain ranges and volcanoes. Above all, it’s never more than an hour to reach the city, sea or mountains by car from anywhere in El Salvador.

• Travel: Americas

Savage beauty

The Luxury Channel | 17 Mar 2015

Savage Beauty, a major retrospective of the work of visionary fashion designer Lee Alexander McQueen, is a cut above the rest. The exhibition – which originated at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York – has been edited and expanded, with 244 items on display. Clothes will always look dull after these.

• Shopping & Fashion

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