I’m a failed celebrity whore.

Most of the time I don’t recognize famous people until someone tells me who they are. And the older I get the more enigmatic celebrities become: a fast-scrolling passel of pretty, pouty Gen Zs popping up in my feed thanks to some misfiring algorithm.

I did see Uma Thurman once.

She kept looking up and peering at me in a Soho restaurant.

"Susan," I whispered to my friend. "Uma Thurman keeps staring at me!"

Susan, ever the New Yorker, glanced up from her coffee.

“Don’t be an idiot,” she said. “She’s looking for the bathroom. It’s over your shoulder.”

And that pretty much sums up my relationship with celebrities.

Dead ones, however, are another matter.

In the 1935 and 1936 writer F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940) would come to the Western North Carolina mountains to see his wife Zelda. They were probably not happy reunions. Zelda, who suffered from mental illness, diagnosed then as schizophrenia and now as bipolar disorder, was consigned to Highland Hospital, a psychiatric clinic in Asheville, She would die there in 1948 when fire consumed it.

Fitzgerald, author of The Great Gatsby and This Side of Paradise, was celebrated for giving voice to the generation who came of age during the Roaring Twenties. He and Zelda got famous. Got rich. Became the toast of two continents. Those were the golden days. Now, after seeing Zelda, he needed a refuge.

The hotel worthy of him was the Grove Park Inn.

The Omni Grove Park Inn, the official name insisted upon by a marketing department and ignored by everyone else, is the great Arts and Crafts hotel that doesn't so much sit atop Sunset Mountain as grow out of it. Built in 1913 from rough-hewn granite hauled from nearby hillsides, the hotel appears less constructed than assembled by giants with Fred Flintstone as general contractor. Great boulders rise into chimneys large enough to stand inside, while the vast lobby glows with firelight even in summer. The Roycroft oak-and-leather chairs glow beneath exposed timbers, rocking chairs line the verandah, and out beyond the terraces and the spa the Blue Ridge Mountains roll away in indigo waves. It's a place that invites lingering rather than rushing, as though modernity itself has agreed to check in and call it an early night.

I had loved Fitzgerald’s writing since I first read The Great Gatsby as a high school junior. So when I learned I could stay in his room at the Grove Park Inn, I jumped at the chance. He always stayed in Room 441, using adjoining Room 443 as his office. I checked in, got the key and ascended in an elevator built into the boulders themselves. I stood in front of 441. A gold plaque affixed there informed the world that this was, indeed, where the literary genius had slept. I opened the door, expecting something worthy of Jay Gatsby himself.

The room was . . . small.

Not charmingly so. Just small. Tight quarters. Comfortable enough. But hardly the sort of expansive salon for penning a paean to the Jazz Age.

My expectations weren’t being managed, they were being deflated.

Disappointment might be the most Fitzgerald of emotions. Like Gatsby staring at the green dock light across the bay, I built something bigger in my mind only to see it vanish in reality.

We're attracted to the hotel rooms of famous people not just for their celebrity, but for the faint hope that some trace of their genius stuck to the wallpaper—or tucked inside the bedspread's batting—might still be waiting for us.

You learn it never does.

But that doesn’t keep us from booking the Churchill Suite in Marrakech at La Mamounia, the Moroccan landmark where the British prime minister painted in its garden; or Suite 1742 of the Fairmont Queen Elizabeth, the Montreal hotel where John and Yoko held their famous “bed-in for peace” in 1969. You want rooms occupied by HRH herself? Request the Queen Suite in Virginia’s Williamsburg Inn. She crashed there in 1957 while commemorating the 350th anniversary of Jamestown’s founding.

Even the very-much-alive Backstreet Boys have their own pilgrimage. Guests at the Venetian Las Vegas can book the “Terminal Fan” experience during the group’s 2026 residency, complete with access to hang in a faux airport lounge filled with BSB swag—and the lingering hope that AJ, Howie, Nick, Brian or Kevin might show up.

I want it that way. But they probably won’t.

Maybe that’s why I still seek out these rooms, whether it’s Fitzgerald’s modest digs at the Grove Park, or the swanky Noel Coward suite at the Red Carnation’s Milestone in London. (An homage; the playwright never stayed there, but what are facts to fame?Blithe spirits?) All of them reminders that a famous hotel room was once simply a place. A bed. A desk. A window with a view.

The magic was never in the room.

It resided in the imagination of the person who looked out a window and saw something the rest of us missed, and found the words or deeds to make us see it too.

Months later, I couldn’t recall much about Room 441. I couldn’t tell you where the dresser was or what hung on the walls.

But Fitzgerald’s writing? Now that stays with me.

A century on he still explains the people you meet better than any online talking head. Like the passage Fitzgerald wrote about the Buchanans, an immensely rich, foolish couple in the Great Gatsby.

“They were careless people, Tom and Daisy—they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.”

His observations on privilege only grows sharper with each news cycle regarding our current crop of fools in Silicon Valley or on Capitol Hill.

The real souvenir from the Grove Park Inn?

Not the room.

The words.

Other hotels worth giving a go:

• Naviva, Four Seasons

• Charleston’s Cooper

• Ireland’s Ballyfin

Do you have a favorite brush with fame in a hotel?

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News flash: Experiential tourism isn’t new.

In the second century AD, Roman travelers, eager for a float down the Nile, were carving their names into Egyptian temple walls. In the 1700s British aristos hightailed it to the Continent to immerse themselves in European customs. In 1926, Americans weren’t thinking about longevity treatments, infinity pools or schlepping around the campagna with Michelin-starred chefs. The Frontier was still a living memory, and upmarket travelers hungered for horses, mountains, campfires and a chance to exchange the coal smoke and crowded cities for the range’s fresh air and wide-open spaces popularized by writer Zane Grey’s cowboy pulse-pounders. Enter the Dude Ranchers’ Association, founded 100 years ago to promote such Western vacations and ensure travelers could find authentic ranches where they could embrace outdoor living rather than read about it.

In this context the word “dude” isn’t Gen X slang, it means a “newbie.” In the early 20th century it referred to an East Coast urbanite—a tenderfoot who had never thrown a saddle over a horse or slept under the stars. Living as a cowboy in the Dakota Badlands during his 20s, New Yorker Teddy Roosevelt celebrated the life. “I do not believe there ever was any life more attractive to a vigorous young fellow than life on a cattle ranch,” he wrote in his autobiography. Ranchers adopted the nickname with good humor, and before long, the places welcoming these visitors became known as dude ranches. Historians trace the origins of the dude ranch to 1882, when Howard Eaton and his brothers accepted their first paying guest at their cattle ranch near Medora in the Dakota Territory. The Eatons, now in Wyoming, still host guests today. (See the “Field Notes” below for a list of current ranches)

What began as an escape for wealthy Easterners soon evolved into one of America’s first experiential vacations, inviting guests not simply to see the West but to participate in it. A century later, the details may be different but the promise of the dude ranch and contact with the working cowboys remain little changed.

Families still arrive seeking horses instead of highways, conversations instead of screen time, and landscapes large enough to remind them that life is very different on the Western range. In an age obsessed with authenticity, the dude ranch is less a relic than a remarkably modern answer to what many travelers say they’re searching for now.

Enter Bryce Albright.

Albright serves as executive director of the Dude Ranchers’ Association, but her connection to the organization began much earlier. She grew up on a member ranch run by her aunt and uncle, surrounded by guests discovering the rhythms of Western life. She lives today on her family’s Wyoming ranch, where she raises cattle, Quarter Horses and two daughters. I asked her why the dude ranch continues to hold appeal—and what the next 100 years might hold.

Q: People have predicted the end of the American West for generations, yet dude ranches are enjoying renewed interest. Why do they still captivate us?

A: “The appeal and allure of the West hasn’t changed and the idea of a dude ranch vacation has stayed the same. People want to experience the life of a cowboy, connect with nature and see the working class of the West. That’s even more important now to be a part of that - pushing cattle or sitting around the campfire listening to stories, reconnecting with family and nature and not screens. In fact, some ranches restrict wifi or laptops, and phones are frequently banned in dining rooms.”

Q: What about the horses?

A: “There’s always going to be horses. The horse remains the foundation of every dude ranch. Elkhorn Ranch in Arizona does a great horseback riding program. You don’t have a ranch without horses.”

Q: How do your members evolve along with modern travelers while preserving the values and traditions that make a dude ranch feel genuinely Western?

A: “If they’re lucky guests can still jump in a creek, but pools and hot tubs are more prevalent now. Some ranches even have full blown spas. Montana’s Mountain Sky Guest Ranch, for example, is state-of-the-art. And while dinner might once have been a can of beans, many ranches are now serving top-of-the-line food. Dancing took place back in the day, and you still see dancing at night. In Livermore, Colorado, Cherokee Park Ranch features a fun and seasoned square dance caller. Guests have the chance to learn, enjoy and laugh while square dancing and line dancing.”

Q: Do visitors have an opportunity to hear stories about the places they’re bunking in?

A: “A lot of the ranches do history talks, delivered by either the family who owns the ranch or a friend who knows the timeline of the property. In Wolf, Wyoming, guests at Eatons’ Ranch join Mr. Ron, a longtime family friend to hear the Eatons’ Ranch’s amazing history. Mr. Ron floats around the ranch throughout the week telling stories and offering guided historical tours of the land surrounding the ranch.”

Q: How do travelers respond?

A: “Guests love that. They know these places are historic but to hear the traditions told to them—the history on where people went riding, the geology or how a mountain range got its name—when you’re sitting on a horse and looking at the Tetons or the Snake River you’ll remember that.”

Q: What do you hope the next hundred years look like for your ranchers?

A: “Dude ranches have outlasted the Great Depression, two world wars, and a global pandemic. The magic has not changed. When you show up, you are surrounded by horses and the ranches—there’s been a lot of love and money put into that. I just hope in 100 years with technology still moving forward, people can still escape to a dude ranch and connect across the dinner table or on the back of a horse. I’m not going outlast AI, but I hope the dude ranch does.”

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Over to you: Have you ever stayed at a dude ranch, or is it still on your travel bucket list? If you’ve been, which ranch did you visit? Let’s swap stories in the comments below!

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Some other uniquely American places and where to find the boots in which to explore them:

• The Napa that works for a living

• Decency and deviled eggs in Madison, WI

• A Buffalo buggy whip baron’s lasting legacy

• The best cowboy boots by The Souvenirist’s Jenn Barger

Field Notes

• Eatons’ Ranch, Wolf, Wyoming. America’s oldest operating dude ranch traces its origins to 1879, when the Eaton brothers established a cattle ranch beneath Wyoming’s Bighorn Mountains. Guests have been paying to experience ranch life here since the early 1880s, helping launch an entirely new style of American vacation. Today the ranch combines horseback riding, fishing, hiking and authentic Western hospitality much as it has for nearly a century and a half. Address: 270 Eaton Ranch Rd; Tele: (307) 655-9285; Rates: From about $2,250 per adult, per week.

• Cherokee Park Ranch, Livermore Colorado. One of Colorado’s oldest family-owned guest ranches, Cherokee Park Ranch has welcomed guests to the Cache la Poudre River country since 1886. Horseback riding, fly fishing, whitewater rafting and nightly campfire gatherings make it a classic all-inclusive Western vacation. The ranch caters to families throughout the summer before shifting to an adults-only season in late August. Address: 436 Cherokee Hills Drive Tele: (970) 493-6522; Rates: From about $3,000 per adult for a week-long all-inclusive stay.

• Triangle X Ranch, Moose, Wyoming. The only dude ranch located inside Grand Teton National Park, Triangle X has been operated by the Turner family for five generations. Log cabins, unlimited horseback riding and spectacular access to Grand Teton scenery make it one of the country’s iconic guest ranches. Wildlife viewing, float trips and fishing round out the experience. Address: 2 Triangle X Ranch Road; Tele: (307) 733-2183; Rates: From about $2,280 per person for a six-night all-inclusive stay.

• Elkhorn Ranch, near Tucson, Arizona. Family-owned since 1945, Elkhorn Ranch occupies a secluded valley in the Sonoran Desert 65 miles southwest of Tucson. Horseback riding, hiking and birdwatching replace television and Wi-Fi, encouraging guests to embrace the slower rhythms of ranch life. Saguaro National Park, Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge and Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument are all within easy reach. Address: 27000 West Elkhorn Ranch Road; Tele: (520) 822-1040; Rates: From $698 per adult, per night (four-night minimum).

• Mountain Sky Ranch, Emigrant, Montana. Set on 17,000 acres in Montana’s Paradise Valley, Mountain Sky blends the traditions of a classic dude ranch with the comforts of a luxury resort. Guests spend their days horseback riding, fly fishing, hiking and exploring Yellowstone National Park before retreating to beautifully restored historic cabins. The ranch is particularly well suited to families seeking an upscale Western vacation with extensive children’s programming. Tele: (800) 548-3392: Rates: Cabins from $14,350 per week (up to two guests).

Traveling across Ireland recently, I was struck by how differently hotels interpreted the task: an aristocratic estate outside Dublin, a polished city salon in Dublin, and a boutique property at the edge of the North Atlantic in Portrush—a seaside Ulster town where Irish tall tales blow in sideways with the rain. They’re all worth a look if you’re headed there.

Carton House

At Carton House, A Fairmont Managed Resort (the official title) the ritual begins with distance. It’s not physical miles — it sits barely forty minutes from Dublin Airport — but psychological.

You leave behind clogged ring roads (don’t get me started on Dublin’s airport) and flyovers to enter the old Anglo-Irish imagination: tree-lined drives, gravel crunching beneath tires, amd a Georgian symmetry trying very hard to convince you life is an artful balance between grace and beauty.

And the Fairmont folks pull it off in a very 21st Century way.

Carton House was once the seat of the Fitzgeralds, the Dukes of Leinster, perhaps the grandest aristocratic family the Irish ever produced besides the Boston Kennedys. Today the estate, like so many, has become a luxury hotel and golf resort, but what makes it fascinating is the way Carton House still holds on to its older self.

Hotel staff glide rather than hustle. Seated in the lobby, a glass of water appears before you quite realize you wanted it. The hostess at Kathleen’s Kitchen remembers you warmly from the night before. Its historic first floor rooms encourage lingering instead of scrolling. The sommelier’s office is the old butchery. There’s a whisky bar in the library. Even golf here feels less athletic pursuit than continuation of some inherited social code embroidered by Greg Norman.

The estate’s greatest ritual, though, may simply be its stately slowness. You arrive exhausted from friction — airports, text pings, the ambient shriek of modern life — and Carton responds by insisting on rhythm rather than rush. This is echoed in the furnishings in its 169 rooms and suites. Then long walks along the River Rye. A dram after dinner. Conversations you can tread as comfortably as the oak floorboards beneath your feet past rooms seemingly designed for reading nineteenth-century novels while rain taps against old windows. The place sells luxury, certainly, but also the belief that life should move gently across the landscape.

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The Westbury

Dublin is one of two cities I know, the other being New Orleans, where storytelling operates as social currency. The 205-room Westbury, where the narrative is elevated to artistry, understands its there to put on a show.

Its famous Gallery — the hotel’s grand drawing-room-like lobby overlooking the Grafton Street hurly burly— may be one of the great people-watching stages in Europe. Fashionable Dubliners and rich Texans slide in for afternoon tea. Older couples linger over champagne. Shoppers who need more of a recovery from their retail expeditions, beeline to The Sidecar, the hotel’s Art Deco bar for cocktails and oysters. All of it is polished to a gleam, but Irish hospitality never mistakes formality for stiffness.

At The Westbury, conversation seems less an activity than one’s civic duty. You feel it in the easy chatter between strangers, in bartenders who know precisely when to become conversationalists and when to dematerialize, in waitstaff who possess the timing of stage actors. James Joyce's famous phrase—"here comes everybody"—still feels like the hotel’s unofficial motto. Even its luxury feels democratic in an Irish way. The Westbury’s room rate may be dear, but its wit remains available to everyone.

The hotel also acts as a kind of urban neutral zone between old Dublin and the aggressively global city now pearling around it. Step outside and tech wealth, retail chains and modern tourism loudly roam the streets. Step back inside and the lighting softens, voices lower and the flowers artfully arranged. At the Westbury Dublin regains its older cadence. Not nostalgia exactly — it’s something more strategic. Call it preservation through performance. And I say bravo to it.

The Marcus Portrush
Portrush is a town on Ulster’s northern Antrim Coast. It’s a small resort town of 6,150 souls, where Ireland stops being so rational and returns itself to the myths and legends of its past. That’s the perfect place for a hotel like the Marcus. The light changes by the minute. The stories expand with whiskey. It’s a place shaped by fishermen, storms, ferries, and a maritime culture layered atop deeper Celtic mythologies.

Unlike the dignified composure of Carton House, the 80-room Marcus leans into the Atlantic’s windblown drama and the legendary Giant’s Causeway, a mind-boggling volcanic landscape where geology and folklore got permanently entangled. Part of Hilton’s Tapestry Collection, the hotel preserved Victorian features like its intricate floor mosaics, and a decorative tiled façade. Inside, the whimsical and bold contemporary design elements draw direct inspiration from the surrounding North Atlantic coastline. Think octopus graphics and a Guinness or two settling darkly at the bar. Pull up a seat and the bartender offers up a free glass of wine and generously encourages you to take a larger pour. Bring up the Causeway, Northern Ireleands only UNESCO World Heritage site, and someone inevitably retells the story of Finn McCool for the thousandth time as though it might still be literally true. And perhaps in some emotional sense it is.

According to ancient lore the basalt columns are not merely rock formations but the work of Finn McCool — or Fionn mac Cumhaill — the giant warrior said to have built the Causeway as a bridge to Scotland. Walking over he came across a Scottish giant, because, of course they had one, too. This Caledonian galoot named Benandonner chased the terrified Finn back to Ireland where his fast-thinking wife got him out of that particular pickle by disguising him as a giant baby. Benandonner, thinking if the baby were this big, his father must be even larger, returns to Scotland. A woman saves a man’s bacon once again.

The local conveying this story did so in a factual manner, as if all this had happened yesterday. In Ireland, myth rarely stays confined to museums. It leaks into weather reports, pubs, and hotel bars. Mr. McCool might have tried hiding out at the Marcus to escape the Scottish giant. If there was a bed big enough for him.

Ireland remains one of the few places where hospitality still functions partly as storytelling. The best Irish properties do not merely pamper their guests; they induct them into the ongoing narrative. At Carton House, the story is order and inheritance. The Westbury gives you conversation and a Dublin showcase. The Marcus is stormy weather and the old tall tales. None of these hotels could exist quite the same way anywhere else and it’s why I think the experience of them matters.

In an era when luxury hotels increasingly resemble one another — same veined Calacatta marble bathrooms, same beige palettes on the walls, same wellness vocabulary — Ireland’s best hotels still feel rooted in their home turf. Not perfect. Not frictionless, but alive with Irish character. Stay in any one of them. You won’t be bored.

If this is your first visit to Lost in Place, you might also enjoy these other Irish stories:

• A Belfast boutique mixes old and new Ulster

• Titanic and me. It’s complicated.

• Ballyfin, an Irish country estate, knows what Americans need

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Field Notes

Hotels:

Carton House, A Fairmont Managed Hotel. One of Ireland’s great country estates, Carton House occupies 1,100 acres just west of Dublin. Once home to the Dukes of Leinster, the restored Palladian mansion combines grand historic interiors with two championship golf courses, extensive walking trails, a spa, and one of Ireland’s finest afternoon tea traditions. Address: Carton Demesne, Maynooth, Co. Kildare; Tele: +353 1 505 2000 Rates: From about €300 per night.

The Westbury. Just off Grafton Street, The Westbury has long been one of Dublin’s grand hotels and remains a gathering place for artists, writers, politicians, and theatergoers. Its central location places Trinity College, St. Stephen’s Green, Temple Bar, and Dublin’s best shopping and restaurants within an easy walk. Address: Balfe Street; Tele: +353 1 646 3300 Rates: From about €375 per night.

The Marcus, Tapestry Collection by Hilton. Housed in a restored Victorian landmark in the center of Portrush, The Marcus is an excellent base for exploring Northern Ireland’s Causeway Coast, including the Giant’s Causeway, Dunluce Castle, and Royal Portrush Golf Club. Opened in 2025, it blends contemporary comfort with easy access to one of Ireland’s most storied landscapes.Address: 67–71 Main Street, Portrush, Northern Ireland; Phone: +44 28 7082 3500; Rates: From about £170 per night.

Sites:

The Causeway is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and the only one in Northern Ireland.

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I’m just back from Punta Mita, 1,500 acres of privileged peninsula along Mexico’s stunning Pacific Coast north of Puerto Vallarta. The private development, some of it owned by Bill Gates, includes indulgent resorts and manicured villas, golf courses, nature trails and beach clubs, a Pendry that’s coming, its own glossy magazine and enough 24/7 security to defend a small country. Punta Mita has every amenity one could desire, but you can’t help thinking all this luxury is still searching for its purpose. There’s no focal point—a museum district, a downtown, nowhere with an edge — though it’s hardly comfortable with the tequila-shot shenanigans they get up to in PV’s Zona Romantica.

But I encountered a clue in the jungle that may point to Punta Mita’s future, and luxury’s—15 tented bungalows at a Four Seasons retreat named Naviva.

Rates start at $2500 a night for two.

But before I talk about that bit of sticker shock, let’s discuss another kind. The kind attached to a store-bought piece of fruit. That little ovaloid produce sticker with logo and microscopic bar code.

You're hungry. You want to eat an apple, so you pick at the gluey thing with a fingernail. It tears. Half stays on the fruit. The other half migrates to your thumb. You try to rub it off and another, smaller piece sticks to your index finger. Soon another portion is on your pinkie. You're swearing now. A task that should take two seconds has become the Mummy's curse, with shreds of adhesive clinging to your fingertips.

It’s a tiny irritation. Modern life is full of them: The wifi service that stops streaming. The airline seat upgrade price. A politician’s unsolicited text for money or a company’s online survey to supply them with free marketing intel. Tasteless tomatoes. The surprise resort fee. Mystery surcharges on restaurant receipts. One irritant isn’t a problem. Their accumulation is. An endless series of small indignities battering our days.

Which is why I think one of the more interesting ideas in luxury travel isn’t higher thread counts or longevity treatments. It’s Naviva’s determination to eradicate irritants from a guest’s stay and focus on nature and privacy as its chief amenities.

Naviva occupies 48 acres tucked into the larger Punta Mita development, close to the main Four Seasons’ resort. Opening just over three years ago, the resort is breathtaking, threaded with waterfalls, lush plantings and a sinuous design of woven bamboo, timber, volcanic stone and copper. There are cinnamon hummingbirds aflutter and coatis and javelina afoot. Naviva feels less like a destination than a cool kids summer camp someone forgot to tell you about.

There’s no list of activities to demand your decisions. They have become artful suggestions based on a gentle, pre-arrival interview where you have described your goals for your stay. Four Seasons calls it “tailored programming.” Spa sessions? Environmental walks? Absolutely. There’s Linda Mariscal Gracian, Naviva’s on-staff curandera and spiritual guide. Ms. Gracian inducts guests into the mysteries of a temazcal sweat lodge, a ritual she has practiced for more than two decades.

Besides such ceremonies Naviva is equipped with plunge pools, tented ceilings and no televisions, no lobby and no upsell. Instead a telescope stands beside your bed. There’s a weathered yellow coffee roaster in the beautifully primitive bar ready to toast beans to one’s desired taste. Wi-Fi exists, but to connect with the larger world here feels shameful, like eating popcorn in church.

The only discordant note came from the chachalacas, Mexican jungle grouse that shriek like the pundits on CNN’s Crosstalk. Might the $2500 a night give you pause? Do the cost benefit analysis. All meals and drinks, even the top-shelf stuff, for two are included. So is one 60-minute spa session per guest per stay and all your activities. Gratuities are discretionary and not expected. So the endless drip-drip-drip of standard resort charges, like the drops from your rainfall shower head, are absent. What you’re get for that is the ability to melt into Naviva’s greenery and leave the friction behind. Alerts, alarms, pings, dings and calls banished. And that is luxury to a Sahib from the Tech Raj juggling shareholders and private equity partners, plagued by activist investors or HR departments. The late-stage resort is here, and its catnip to late stage capital.

For decades, luxury meant accumulation. Bigger rooms. More amenities. More options. More choices.

Four Seasons is moving us in the opposite direction. Fewer choices. Fewer interruptions. Fewer decisions. More solitude.

Naviva is not about being seen. You want that? Get your Mar-a-Lago face on and hit Palm Beach. You’re here to sink beneath the waters of your shaded pool with nary a ripple disturbing its surface.

Yes, I’m aware of the irony of it all. The wealthy are now so rich they are no longer buying things, they are buying relief from things. But wandering past the waterfalls I thought the most important aspect of Four Seasons’ experiment may have nothing to do with its current customer base. The real opportunity lies somewhere below them.

Because if someone can figure out how to extend even part of this frictionless model to the mass affluent traveler, they are going to make a mint.

Not everyone can afford $2500 a night. But millions of people would happily pay a premium for the opportunity to be free from the digital pests sucking the life from us. One fee. One decision. No surprises. Fingers unstuck from the sticky bits of modern life.

The hospitality industry, like the airlines, spent decades perfecting unbundling. Every service separated. Every convenience monetized.

The coming revolution may be bundling everything back together. Not because it’s cheaper, but because it’s calmer. In a world increasingly defined by hidden costs and endless micro-decisions, the luxury that matters now may be surprisingly simple: the rare experience of a day without someone trying to charge you, sell you, notify you, upgrade you, interrupt you, optimize you, surveil you, or demand a decision. Whether it’s found in the Irish Midlands or the Mexican jungle hardly matters.

I hope the next travel industry billionaire is the person who figures out how to take the damn stickers off the apples.

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Two other resonant retreats and a rain forest to check out:

• Is this Irish estate a cure for a crazy world?

• Charleston SC’s new five star

• North Carolina’s temperate jungle

Field Notes

• Naviva, A Four Seasons Resort Punta Mita. Hidden on a private peninsula north of Puerto Vallarta, Naviva is an experiment in luxury where the company created just 15 ocean-view tented bungalows scattered across 48 acres of Pacific coast jungle. Accommodations range from 1,259 to 1,722 square feet of indoor-outdoor living space and feature plunge pools, expansive decks and open-air design to blur the line between bungalow and jungle. Guests regularly spot coatis, pelicans, peccaries and dozens of tropical bird species. Activities are tailored through conversations with guests before arrival and can include temazcal ceremonies, wellness programming, environmental walks, ocean activities and one complimentary 60-minute spa journey per guest per stay. All meals, in-bungalow dining, premium alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverages, wellness experiences and guided activities are included. Airport transfers are available but are not included in the nightly rate. Typical stays average four nights. Rates: From $2,425 per night for double occupancy and $1,745 for single occupancy, plus taxes and fees. Phone: +52 (329) 291-6100 Reservations: ReservationsNaviva@fourseasons.com

From Nat Geo friends:

• Oaxacan gifts sourced by the Souvenirist

I never understood The Crown-Downton Abbey thing. It’s make-believe. It’s dress-up. It’s undemocratic, and it creates a conundrum: After 250 years as a republic, Americans claim to hate aristocracy, yet a surprising number of us can’t get enough of it when overseas. Half of the UK’s National Trust properties are kept afloat by our fascination with buttered scones, Regency wallpaper and rounded vowels

Why is this? I have a theory after spending two days recently at Ballyfin Demesne (that’s French and pronounced “domain”), a restored neo-classical manor set on 614 bucolic acres in the Irish Midlands that functions as one of the world’s most seductive arguments for civilized living.

It was a welcome change after several nights dodging the inebriated crowds thronging Dublin’s Temple Bar—now so overwhelmed with loud rock and drink touts it resembles Bourbon Street, but with better beer. My arrival at Ballyfin, felt less like a hotel check-in and more like witness protection for the over-touristed.

As the BMW hybrid turned through gates flanked by two little Greek temples, we rolled past meadow and wood before stopping in front of stone steps of an elegant manor made of sandstone blocks. Four massive Doric columns framed the great front door supporting a pediment on which was carved a helmeted knight. On either end of the steps’ wing walls crouched bosomy stone sphinxes. They feel a bit scandalous against all the neo-classical restraint—like two pole dancers touring Monticello. On the rambling green lawns robot mowers silently clipped away at the turf sloping into a 20-acre artificial lake, the largest in Ireland, upon which a pair of swans and their eight cygnets placidly paddled.

The old Anglo-Irish aristocracy knew the value of theatrical entrances. And the Cootes, a fabulously wealthy and titled family that built Ballyfin were better at it than most.

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The house sprang from one of Ireland’s great contradictions: a Protestant ruling class attempting to recreate English aristocratic life in a Catholic majority Ireland that increasingly resented them for it. The Emerald Island simmered with dependency, anger and eventually revolt. Following the upheavals that established Irish independence in 1922, the Coote family sold the estate in 1928 to the Catholic Patrician Brotherhood. The fathers converted Ballyfin into a boarding school where school boys hunched over desks in rooms built for spectacle. It declined gradually until closing in 2001. In 2002 Ballyfin was sold to Fred and Kay Krehbiel, wealthy Chicagoans who transformed what was now a decrepit pile into a 20-guest room, 40,000-square-foot heritage hotel spending $50 million and nine years to do so. The couple adopted the motto of its original builder, Sir Charles Coote: “Coûte que coûte” (”Cost what it may”).

The result is extraordinary. Disembark and uniformed staff, “butlers” in Ballyfin parlance, disappear your luggage while you’re offered hot towels and a glass of champagne, neither disagreeable, while standing on a mosaic from 79 A.D. prised from a Pompeian’s atrium during a Grand Tour when cultural patrimony meant you could afford to ship the art back home. The floor survived Vesuvius intact, but met its match in Lady Caroline Coote, wife of Sir Charles and a formidable woman with an eye for design and some very deep pockets.

Her sensibility lingers. Ballyfin’s public rooms are filled with 18th and 19th century antiques and oil paintings and crowned by vast ceilings fringed with crown moulding and corbels carved in classical motifs. There’s the “Whispering Room,” named for an acoustical trick that allows those speaking into the corners to hear someone standing diagonally opposite. In the Stair Hall, painted robin’s egg blue, portraits of long-vanished Cootes stare at the Americans milling about in athleisure wear. Room opens upon room, each one grander than the last - filled with cut flowers, chinoiserie and a sense of privilege that makes you instinctively lower your voice. You move through them like someone inside Saltburn before anything terrible has happened. And that’s deliberate. However briefly, Ballyfin allows its guests to feel a pride of ownership (with clothes on and “Murder on the Dancefloor” off).

Ballyfin’s guest rooms, painted in muted Georgian yellows and green, offer 1820s charm without the 1820s plumbing. My own bathtub could float a dreadnought. The suite I inhabited was “The Duke of Wellington,” named for the victor of Waterloo who spent part of his youth on the estate before Ballyfin assumed its current form. Plump couches and chairs sport floral fabrics edged with silk. The wide paned glass windows frame the lawn welcoming in bird song and the scent of cut grass. Gilded frames encase etchings, china plates hang from the wall. It’s inherited memory you can bed down with.

Ballyfin structures days with activities and the confidence of a vanished social order. Each guest receives a personalized itinerary printed on creamy stock like an engraved engagement announcement. Mine included an early walk through the grounds, clay-pigeon shooting, and an afternoon whiskey tasting in The Cellar Bar, a basement bar and restaurant in the old servants’ hall where Irish whiskey arrives paired with dark chocolate and cheddar-flavored potato chips. Upstairs, Ballyfin’s Michelin-starred State Dining Room overseen by Executive Head Chef Richard Picard-Edwards transforms produce from the estate gardens into dinners that feel less consumed than an elevated ritual.

Whether you hail from Grand Rapids or San Jose, at Ballyfin you’re offered the opportunity to become Lord of the Manor without judgement. For €75 staff will outfit you as a Regency dandy complete with accessories like lilac-colored waistcoats, beaver skin top hats, and walking sticks. For the ladies: white empire-waisted gowns, blue satin bonnets and fans. Come dinnertime you might see a couple gliding down the halls like a Jane Austen thought bubble.

Fun yes, but those costumes also revealed something else about Ballyfin.

What intrigued me most about the place wasn’t its rebirth, but the profoundly American impulse behind it. The Krehbiels’ fortune, derived from the family’s electronics company Molex, sold for an estimated $7.2 billion, was deployed to bring Ballyfin back. The effort hardly looked easy after flipping through the thick red leather photo albums documenting the process. The ceilings leaked, the stonework had crumbled and the old pile seemed to be dissolving back into the damp Irish landscape from which it had sprung. But this wasn’t work. It was a calling. When Ballyfin opened to guests for the first time in 2011 what had been created for them was not just a luxury hotel, but as an entire vanished social ecosystem.

The Krehbiels didn’t save a piece of architecture; they restored its sense of choreography.

Ballyfin’s library, fountains, silver service, walled gardens, uniformed staff, riding paths, and conservatory — all of it reconstructs a world governed by rules, hierarchy, and aesthetic coherence. Which may explain why Americans devour the Ballyfin’s offerings like they do the restaurant’s poached black sole. In an age of algorithmic brands, buckling institutions, and inane informality, Ballyfin and other grand houses like it provide something increasingly rare: a portal with structure and coherence.

That’s key. Modern travelers claim to hate rules but there’s power to riding at two, drinks at six and dinner at eight. We consume the Crowleys of Downton not because we wish to become them—what a stuffy bunch—but because we want their absolute assurance that structure matters. That order matters. We want someone, somewhere, who still knows how the protocol works if only to elevate us in a craven age of AI slop and neck tattoos. A two-night stay on a great Irish estate like Ballyfin offers relief from the exhausting, improvised feeling of a digitized, atomized modern America

Ballyfin understands this intuitively. It feels less like checking into a luxe resort than entering a sanctuary that still believes beauty, ritual, and order are moral acts—even if those sentiments are as extinct in the larger world as the Great Irish Elk and its magnificent antlers pulled out of a Galloway bog and mounted in the entrance hall.

Would new rules or a new social compact restore America’s lost civility? Who knows? Who would impose them? Maybe that’s a Bridgerton too far. Right now, book a few days at the Ballyfin for yourself and know that somewhere in a grand house on a green lawn in Ireland, however briefly, all is right with the world.

Ballyfin Demesne An Anglo-Irish estate in County Laois, Ireland, where whiskey tastings, archery, and Michelin-starred dining unfold across 614 acres of sense and sensibility. About 90 minutes from Dublin. Tele: +353 57 875 5866; Rates: from €870 nightly. “Coûte que coûte”

Other places other rooms:

• Belfast's got a brand new boutique

• Charleston’s Cooper is Super Duper

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Correction: An earlier version of this article misstated the surname of Fred and Kay Krehbiel. Their surname is Krehbiel, not Krehbiels.

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The city’s history would put any town on tenterhooks: the sinking of the Titanic (built here), the slow collapse of its shipbuilding and industrial might, and from the 1970s through the 1990s the political and religious furies known as “The Troubles.” But Belfast’s tough and the built environment reflects its toughness: a massive stone Edwardian City Hall with a dome echoing the grandeur of St. Paul’s Cathedral, Victorian commercial blocks muscular enough to survive bombardments (the Nazi Luftwaffe hit it hard in WWII) and Art Deco banks that look like fortresses.

But recently it’s unclenched its jaw and gone in for some breathwork.

Thanks to a clever repackaging of its heritage, the city saw some 1.58 million spend-y travelers arrive last year. There’s a smart Titanic exhibition (more on that in another post), the revival of Irish whiskey distilleries like the reborn McConnell’s housed in an old Victorian jail and new berths for an armada of cruise ships. When it comes to tourism Belfast’s agita is lifting.

Which is why its newest boutique hotel, The Bedford, feels so right now.

Opened in April 2026, the 82-room Bedford occupies the former Scottish Mutual Building. It’s an extraordinary pile originally constructed between 1902 and 1904 in the flamboyant “Scottish Baronial” style — all corbelled corner turrets, crow-stepped gables, arches, and castle-like swagger. The dark red Ballochmyle sandstone façade projected wealth, stability, and civic ambition at the height of Belfast’s industrial golden age, when the city was one of the British Empire’s manufacturing capitals.

Its location could not be better. The Bedford is smack in the city center across from the grand City Hall. Dodge Belfast’s pink double-decker buses, nicknamed “Barbie buses” and take a closer look. The front lawns sport sculptures of local heroes like abolitionist Mary Ann McCracken and ship builder Edward Harland, their head and shoulders “shampoo-ed by the seagulls” as one local put it. There’s even a memorial garden to the ill-fated Titanic. Its loss plunged the entire city into mourning.

Interior features lean heavily into a kind of edited Edwardian modern. Original mosaic floors, ceramic tile borders and stained-glass accents survive throughout the building to showcase the prowess of skilled craftsmen. Guest rooms soak in Palmolive green tones because nobody here feared being an Irish cliche. The herringbone white-and-green carpet beneath rounded claret-colored club chairs evoke an overall mood landing somewhere between a White Star Line CFO’s townhouse and discreet banking club. The bathrooms feature creamy subway tile and black matte fixtures and muntins dividing the glass shower panels.

Downstairs, the hotel’s restaurant, The Nineteen Hundred, continues the performance. Executive Chef Noel McMeel’s menu draws heavily on Northern Irish traditions while nudging them gently upscale. A ploughman’s lunch arrived stacked almost like class distinctions: cheese and soda bread anchoring the bottom tier, curried fillings in the middle, potted ham and corned beef elevated above like edible social hierarchy.

It’s all new paint and hope. Some small complaints. No luggage stand in the room meant some roller bag yoga and the light switches took time to figure out, but on a hotel’s maiden voyage you’ll have a few things to correct. Which leads to another fun fact. This was no ordinary office building. The Scottish Temperance Assurance Company — life insurance and building society concern — built the place to house serious financial machinery. And because early 20th-century commerce still depended on physical ledgers, deeds, and cash deposits, the structure required astonishing security infrastructure.

Which explains one of the hotel’s best details—its 32 original steel financial vault doors.

They’re not decorative flourishes. The steel doors, each as heavy as sin, are preserved throughout the building like fossils from an era of starched-collars and fountain pens. Rather than remove them in the recent restoration, developers cleverly repurposed many as dramatic entrances to in-room mini-bars and coffee stations. Somewhere between theatrical and faintly absurd, the metal doors are oddly appropriate symbols for Belfast itself — a city trying to open up while the doorways to its past can still swing open if you pull hard enough.

Which, honestly, feels very Belfast too.

Because what makes the city compelling right now isn’t simply reinvention. Plenty of post-industrial cities reinvent themselves. Belfast is more interesting because it hasn’t entirely polished away the evidence of what came before. Its ballsiness. Its scars. Its ambition and black humor.

So a new boutique hotel with 32 century-old steel doors left in place? That’s the ticket.

More places to check-in and check out:

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• Why this summer matters, too

Field Notes:

The Bedford Belfast is located at 16–22 Bedford Street, Belfast BT2 7FD, directly across from Belfast City Hall. For reservations and information, contact the property at +44 28 9590 0700. Nightly rates currently begin around £199 depending on season and room category.

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Named after the tidal river it overlooks, the Cooper is a game-changer. Built by billionaire Ben Navarro’s Beemok Hospitality Collection (BHC), the company, which also owns the renovating Charleston Place, opened the wallet and held nothing back.

Debuting just three weeks ago, it’s a “Holy S**t” moment for the Holy City and a pivot point in Charleston’s long flirtation with money, water, and identity.

Here’s why. First up, the location’s terrific. Built at the point the Cooper River widens into Charleston Harbor, the hotel is the city’s only one of note to dangle its feet in water. Older Charleston properties were loathe to hug the shore, what with king tides and the pungent pluff mud. Instead the more prominent bunkhouses clustered on or near King Street, Charleston’s retail spinal cord. BHC dreamed and dared, with the Cooper the start of a 70-acre redevelopment of the city’s east side industrial waterfront that will include housing, shops and flood control. Hurricanes may blow, Antarctica may melt, but the Cooper looks to keep its head above water.

Secondly, its assured poise. Pull up to the lobby. Greeting you will be a cadre of youthful white-suited concierges right out of Gattaca. One becomes your personal attendant during your stay. With a light smile and a few deft swipes on a screen, they check you in to any one of 191 rooms, including 20 suites. To outfit them New York-based Champalimaud Design dreamed up a world of creamy Low Country good taste—pale oak floors, bathrooms patterned in French blue herringbone tiles, Matouk linens, woven textures, and a calming, coastal palette. Any drama is saved for the rooms’ Juliette balconies that sport views of the harbor or the plashing fountains of Joe Riley Waterfront Park. It all feels like a Southampton beach house scaled to a full-service hotel with a layout that keeps the water in guests’ sight lines as much as possible. The only thing missing is the sand in your On Clouds.

Thirdly, the amenities. They, too, center around the riverine. There’s a private marina with boats available for guest use, including a Hinckley yacht. Set forth to circumnavigate Fort Sumter with a pitcher of G&Ts and one for sunscreen. Friends can watch the action commence from the shimmer of the fifth-floor infinity pool arranged to be a watery social hub with cabanas and daybeds rather than a quiet lap lane. A 7,000-square-foot spa adds the current assortment of recovery features—cryotherapy, red light therapy, sauna—alongside standard treatments, and a fully equipped fitness center open around the clock with a living wall of terrarium vegetation in jeweled tones of jade, emerald and peridot.

And while it’s too new to render a final verdict on the restaurants, the ambition is clear. The Crossing, with its curvilinear wood finishes resembles a yacht’s interior with a lounge and chef’s table setup, and its Mediterranean-leaning menu is filled with local ingredients. Forte dei Marmi meet frogmore stew. Facing the public park at ground level the not-yet-opened CurrentBurger goes the opposite direction—retro soda shop, smash burgers, milkshakes, and a walk-up window to tempt Battery wanderers. Cooper Coffee & Wine handles the daytime-to-evening shift, moving from café to wine bar with a tidewater languor. Up top, Bar Marti nuzzles the pool, serving drinks and small plates. It’s a four-part ecosystem designed to keep guests circulating—and spending—without feeling trapped.

The effort doesn’t feel aspirational in that anxious, Southern-Charm reality TV way other Charleston hotels do. The bloodlines are better. The cheekbones are higher. The Cooper’s the closest to perfect money can by, and it took a lot of that—reportedly north of $115 million. And the hotel is also a symbol. It’s the culmination of Charleston’s two-decade journey to becoming a luxury travel destination. And while the city still debates, sometimes passionately, the wisdom of pinning its future on high-end tourism, there’s no arguing the Cooper is going to be the blue chip in that bet.

You’ll leave town wanting to wish the Cooper luck. It’s stunning. And its competition: the Bennett, the Dewberry, the empty lot on Meeting Street that will become the Four Seasons, and even the Cooper’s sister property, The Charleston Place, are going to have to reinvent themselves to compete with this weaponized Miss Golightly. No Breakfast at Tiffany’s for them. The Cooper has just eaten their lunch.

The Cooper is located at 176 Concord St, Charleston, SC 29401. For reservations and information, contact the property at (843) 722-4900 or visit thecooper.com. Nightly rates start at $850.

Other worthy Southern destinations:

• An American rainforest

• A homegrown Hogwarts in Tennessee

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