The Dolder Grand.

If I am ever filthy rich, I vow to spend at least a week in the spa at this place (40,000 square feet of European spa). The hotel is The Dolder Grand - actually the hotel featured in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (in Zurich at the end when she is sporting her wig). Was delighted to stay there and spend a couple of hours in the spa while on the very short trip for work. It was like getting just a scrap of an incredible treat. 5 years ago the hotel was restored to its 1890 delightful state, with a modern wing added on by Lord Norman Foster.




I guess they added hanging candlesticks to the bar too.





In my two-hour stint at the spa, I bathed in mud, sat in a steamy sauna for 20 minutes, plunged into this freezing cold pool of water and occupied a "snow room" - in which snow actually falls. I guess the formula for a magical spa experience is a variety of glazes/textures, thermal readings and tiny mirrors covering the walls like tiles.



We were holding an event in the hotel, so we got a special tour - where we saw "theme" suites like this one (the Rolling Stones suite, where the room looks like it is straight out of 100 Club and the bathroom the inside of a disco ball).





The owner sprinkled his personal art collection all around the hotel; some of the pieces made my eyes bug out.



Like Takashi Murakami's mushrooms. Love them (I guess the story goes he spent his childhood mooning over his mother's mushroom garden). Each of those mushrooms in the painting above has a larger than life counterpart (like the one below).




Loved these - Philip Haas after Giuseppe Arcimboldo (Italian Renaissance painter's these).



Niki de Saint Phalle


You know the rest.

24 hours in Zurich.

That was it. It felt like a muted 24 hours in the forest. Going from New York to a hushed abeyance for just a moment. I actually went for work, but got to spend time in a superb hotel and then just a skip into the city as well. Swiss cities are all impressive in their taintless form - impeccable cobblestone streets - that river, the Limmat, is crystalline: you can see the pebbles at the bottom even at midnight.

Zurich: the Swan.

Saint-Tropez.

Today I am leaving Saint-Tropez. My deepest bow - my nose to my toes - to this town. Yesterday, it sang its salute to me: a severe summer storm - that silenced even the yawping seagulls (who, in a town like Saint-Tropez, often wake you up at 5 AM unloading their complaints) with the cannonade and clapping of the thunder. I had spent 45 days in Saint-Tropez and it was the second time I had ever seen rain. So, on the subject of my departure, Saint-Tropez and I are in accord.

St. Tropez.

Le début.

Antwerpen.

Just a short train ride from Paris is the lovely little Belgian Antwerp. Stephen was visiting from New York and John came along too. John often goes to Antwerp for business - (business meaning buying really lovely things to sell to people at much higher prices in the US of A). Fun business. So we wanted to come along this time and see what Antwerp had to offer.


Immediately upon exiting the train station, Antwerp delivered a very smiley man sitting on a suitcase. I took it as a positive sign. He was very pleased when I asked to take his photo.


There were miniscule apples in between the grates at the base of the trees.


And an old lady wearing fancy silver-lace up boots.


Bikes, bikes in profusion.


Lines of old ringers.


Such light.


A browsing Stephen and chamber pots.


Creepiness.


Stephen and John.


Pictoral beauty.


The olive tree was 300 years old had been carefully transplanted from Spain.


And oh so much furniture.

Gustavian Wow.

While in Antwerp, John was prowling for Gustavian Swedish furniture, as one example. I didn't know much about it until I entered one shop and was a bit taken aback by the beauty and simplicity, the grays and the subtle blues of this style and period of furniture. We are talking 1772 - 1792 officially, the reign of Swedish King Carl Gustav III. When he began his rule, he had just come back to Sweden from Versailles where he was visiting the pretty-soon to be ousted Louis XVI. The French were highly influential, but this Swede took the neo-classic influence of the Frenchies and made it better. See: