Vanessa Boz from the family travel site, Boz Around, recently got back from a weekend getaway in the heart of Somerset with her adorable family. A three-hour drive from their homebase in central London, Babington House is an iconic English country house hotel from Soho House set on 18 rolling acres. Here’s the thing: you’d never know from the beautiful photos, but the place is a dream for kids. “It doesn’t try too hard,” says Vanessa, who calls it homey and modern–with lots of working fireplaces and blankets on lazy sofas–and has a charming worn-in aesthetic. It’s a nice balance with the classic, formal buildings. And with everyone all aflutter about Downton Abbey, I thought the place would be particularly appealing.

The Details
I’m really attracted to are all the subtle, interesting ways the property caters to kids. You don’t feel like you’re sacrificing every your own experience by traveling with kids. Rather, it’s like a well-executed afterthought. The family suites are duplex-style with a huge bathtubs and playstations hidden in the cupboard. “The swimming pool is really big, indoor and outdoor, warm water, wonderful,” says Vanessa. “There’s a cinema room with popcorns and movies for the children and a complimentary dinner for kids every day in the restaurant at tea-time.”

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This time last year, we were planning our big road trip to New Orleans, where we stayed in an incredible set of historic antebellum homes with beautiful antiques, a slate pool, sprawling outdoor courtyard and secret passageways. We were in the city for a mere week, which gave me the itch to come back, to stay longer, to linger. New Orleans is the kind of place you want to settle into and make friends and develop some kind of routine–preferably one that involves daily walks down streets so thick with majestic oaks they feel like tunnels and visits to Satsuma Cafe (one of the yummiest, most laid-back cafes I’ve ever been to in the United States).

A lovely homebase for all of that, 714 Nicholls is one of the more unsung spots of the Coppola collection, perhaps because it’s a standalone house, not a hotel, and you have to stay for at least 60 days. But to me, that’s its charm. This French Quarter creole cottage forces you to create a temporary residence. It gives you time to spend long hours with a book on the leafy veranda and three kitchens to make grand dinners, instead of ticking away at obligatory tourist hit lists.

Inside, the decor leans toward an eccentric French style with peeling plaster, velvet sofas and plenty of antiques, and the aesthetic spills outside onto the lush patio that  could easily pass for a hidden Parisian garden. Billed as a perfect spot for long-term creative retreats or film execs, the space can be split up, offering two distinct suites (with full kitchens), plus four additional bedrooms.

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The first time I heard about Villa Augustus, I was sitting in Studio Aandacht’s studio in Amsterdam’s IJburg neighborhood getting recommendations for a story I was writing about Dutch design. Ben and Tatjana pointed me straight to this playfully designed hotel, promising the most all-encompassing creative experience in the area. I was strapped for time, so I didn’t make it, sadly– but I’ve been following the progress and dreaming of getting back there ever since. I’ve looked at the website so many times, it feels like I’ve stayed there. At the risk of sounding overly praiseworthy and breathless about the place, Villa Augustus represents everything that is right and good in the travel world. It is so inspiring to see such creative care applied to every possible detail: walls with whimsical illustrations and geometrical prints hand-painted by the owner; fresh baked loaves of bread; handmade chandeliers that change every season; custom dinnerware emblazoned with the hare logo; and eclectic, mismatched furnishings handpicked for every room. In place of the typical hotel shop, there’s a flower and vegetable market, which makes perfect sense because the four acres of lush growing grounds surrounding the repurposed 19th-century water tower are dedicated to organic gardens, beautiful flowers, an orchard, and an Italian renaissance garden. There’s even a lemon tree greenhouse.

A testament to the creativity the place fosters, blogger/designer Ingrid Jansen, who makes the coolest wool-covered stools, spends three days a week manning the market shop and raves up and down about the magical design wonderland that owners Daan van der Have, Dorine de Vos and Hans Loos created. ”I’m in love with my workplace and feel privileged to work in such a wonderful place.” There are 37 rooms total–20 in the tower and 17 in garden building–and they’re all different. The interiors were designed by Dorine d Vos, who’s also an illustrator, responsible for the walls as well as a Villa Augustus garden and cookbook. To see some of her work and get a feel for the Villa Augustus aesthetic, check out the website she illustrated. Ingrid tells me there’s a room next to the greenhouse with a secret garden that’s “like a fairytale,” and I think that’s where I’d like to stay. Prices start at $165 and include breakfast, served in the restaurant, which is, of course, located right in the garden.

[Photos: via designskool.net (top, three and five); by Walter Herfst for Villa Augustus; and lilimsadventures.blogspot.com (images four and six)]

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Calling all romantic, aspiring innkeepers: Someone buy this hotel. The Hôtel du Parc, which recently made a heart-stopping appearance in World of Interiors, is going to close in the next year if the owner can’t find someone to take it over. Tim Beddow’s beautiful images show off the hand-painted work of Antoine Barateaud, who was the son of the hotel proprietor’s best friend. It’s a fascinating story that reads like an artistic timestamp of an era: grand hotel particular bought by young couple in love; World War I; recovering, wounded soldier with a penchant for Art Nouveau. You’ll have to nab a copy of the article (February issue) to get all the details, because it doesn’t feel right giving them all away here. And if even if you can’t buy the place, the old beauty is definitely worth traveling for.

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My weekend guests at Honor & Folly were in town from Chicago visiting Detroit for the first time. Of the super-creative, multi-talented group, one is a professional photographer who sent over these images of their trip. I know what my Detroit looks like, but it’s always fascinating to see what other people find interesting and beautiful. Check out his wife Karen’s travel blog for her take on the Conservatory at Belle Isle–one of my favorite places in the city. Their friend told me later it has a Great Expectations-like quality–”kind of creepy and desolate but in a really enchanting way.” I tend to agree. If you stay at Honor & Folly in the spring, summer or fall, I will very likely send you there with a picnic basket. You will thank me.

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Inspired by my good friend Lauren, who is bananas about Hawaii and always stays in some out-of-the way gem (last time it was a treehouse in the north shore of Oahu) instead of a resort,  and Designtripper’s latest sponsor, The Hawaiian Islands, I’m excited to feature what just might be the granddaddy of all Hawaiian vacation rentals. I usually think of quaint, white-washed cottages filled with tropical bamboo furniture, but that’s exactly why this modernist beauty blows my mind — it bucks every expectation. Designed by Craig Steely Architecture, The Robert Trickey house (named after the owner, an interior designer/upholsterer from San Francisco) sits high on a lava flow overlooking the ocean. It’s crazy, right? A lava flow! Look at those hearty, sculptural plantings! There’s also an open-air lanai, glass-enclosed living room, cantilevered stairs made of mango wood, and the most spectacular pool setting I have ever seen. And it gets even better–if you’re the sort who appreciates a  good backstory. But here in the land of molten lava, the landscape isn’t seen as a con; in fact, almost every aspect of the house was designed to appreciate it. Robert keeps his furniture spare and simple, so as not to compete with the otherwordly surroundings, and from the lanai at night, the red glow from the Kilauea crater is visible reflected on the clouds.

The Details
You can’t rent the entire main house, but you can rent a guest room or the full, self-contained guest house, which sleeps up to four. Prices start at $470 or $645, respectively. Says the owner, about the area/landscape: “You’ll be amazed to find such a truly heavenly and unspoiled part of Old Hawaii… lush and green, yet drier and better for outdoor activities than other parts of Puna.” Rent it at vrbo.com.

[Photos via Craig Steely Architecture; This post is sponsored by The Hawaiian Islands, where you could be Living in the Moment on Hawaii Island.]

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When Megan and I met to discuss cards for Honor & Folly, she offered to let me hang her work in the space. I picked this triptych, which was inspired by Virginia Wolf’s Orlando, a fitting starting point for Megan’s tableture and texts crafted from hand-cast, -dyed and -carved paper suspended in Italian beeswax. She’s the founder of two other independent presses, including The Dead Skin Press, which generates cross-disciplinary work across installations, events, printed matter and discrete objects. I’m really excited to see what she does with Signal Return, and beyond honored to showcase her talent in my humble little space.

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I recently started poking around for a new place to go in Mexico this winter, even though I feel a strong pull back to the town we went last year, Sayulita. But so many friends and readers have asked about or gushed about Tulum, I decided to do some exploratory digging. I found a string of no-fuss beachside bungalows that all speak the same understated, bohemian thatched-roof vernacular. And the Coqui Coqui guest house and spa is pretty much right in line with that rustic aesthetic, but it comes with a rare thoughtfulness and exquisite taste. Owned by model Nicolas Malleville and his girlfriend Francesca, the thatched-roof stone buildings seem more residence than resort, every room thoughtfully and simply decorated with local artisan-crafted furniture and objects. These beautiful images by Todd Selby reveal spaces that feel both primitive (no internet or air conditioning or electricity aside from solar panels) and highly curated–a balance difficult to strike. In the budding Coqui Coqui empire of small-scale, authentic enterprise, there are also two other equally magical hotels, plus a cafe, shop and perfumery in nearby Yucatan towns (up to an hour and a half away).

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For New Year’s Eve this year, my husband Ryan and I made a last-minute trip into Chicago to stay at Longman & Eagle. I’ve written about the proper six-room inn above the Logan Square restaurant of the same name–both here and for the magazine I used to work for, CS Interiors–so I’ve had a tour of all the rooms, interviewed the owners/designers, the works, but I’ve never actually stayed there. Being in the space overnight as a guest gave me a chance to really appreciate all the thoughtful little details that make staying there there such a special experience (beyond the fact that the rooms and furniture were all designed and built by one of the owners): handmade wooden drink coins, mixed tapes, custom wooden speakers, chambray sheets made by the local company Unison, hanging terrariums over the bathroom sink, wallpaper in the restaurant bathrooms made from black and white pages of an old magazine, a minibar filled with snacks like Gunslinger beef jerky. Aside from a quick stop at the MCA to see the Andrew Bird and instrument maker Ian Schneller collaborative exhibit, Sound Garden (on its last day), and our favorite haunt in our old neighborhood (The Rainbo), we didn’t leave Longman & Eagle. We didn’t need to. We ate dinner there (a special New Year’s Eve tasting menu) sat at the long wooden bar for an after-dinner drink, and hung out in the room (I read the entire Logan Square Literary Review) before heading back downstairs in the morning for the kind of meaty brunch that makes men out of boys. I opted for the PRB breakfast sans PBR, which felt kind of wimpy considering some of the other, more daring options (spicy brioche with bacon pudding!). But I was craving something simple, and it was damn good.

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One of the many things I love about the Lloyd Hotel in Amsterdam is that it’s always changing. I was just poking around on the site and noticed they have a new exhibit featuring ceramic keys by artist Anama Ponce Vazquez, who has been intrigued by keys since she walked into a room full of them in an Andalusian house as a child. “For me, keys don’t have to do with locking up, but with opening doors,” she says. This collection of keys was made specifically for the Lloyd–with a color scheme to match–and in order to get the color saturation deep enough, she had to bake some of them up to three times. As evidenced by the logo for Honor & Folly, I also have a thing for keys–really beautiful old skeleton types. Mine were hand-drawn by the talented Detroit-based illustrator Michael Burdick, and I love them.

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[All images by Gemma and Andrew Ingalls]

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Tucked away in the woods, just past the Boy Scout tents, the Craigslist-snagged teepee is kitted out with seagrass flooring, a futon, and vintage cooler, antique hurricane lantern and Navajo rug from her regular hit-list circuit of flea, yard and barn sales. The whole production is pretty much a knockout, and I can’t wait to stay next summer. I’d like to think I’m tough enough to brave a winter weekend, because, technically, it’s an all-weather teepee with a fire pit, but I think I’ll be really honest with myself and save the experience for the snow-free months. Happy New Year! See you next week.

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I’ve been so crazed working on Honor & Folly, I’ve let designtripper fall to the wayside a bit. And now that the b&b is open (hooray!), this is exactly the kind of trip I’d like to take. Tatjana Quax, the stylist half of Studio Aandacht, sent over these photos from her late fall trip to the Ionian island of Zakynthos–documented by Homer and later home to a litany of famous poets, artists and composers. Mythical legend contends that Artemis used to wander the island’s woods, while her brother Apollo played his lira under the trees in order to enchant the island and make it even more beautiful.

Travelers are still wooed by the natural beauty, of course (you can’t read anything without mention of the majestic caves, cliffs or capes), but it gets more and more difficult to separate that from the thriving and pretty scene-y hotel-restaurant-gallery-shop circuit of the islands. Tatjana’s photos are a good reminder of how you can turn something that many might perceive as a drawback into a trip’s most striking asset. During the tail-end of Greece’s Indian summer, most everything is closed, but Tatjana took advantage of having the island entirely to herself. I appreciate seeing a place like this without throngs of tourists/vacationers, stripped back to its essentials, making you appreciate the great natural beauty that made it so popular in the first place.

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My big announcement for the year: Honor & Folly is open and ready for guests! As a freelance writer (and blogger), I log a lot of solo hours behind the computer. And as much as I love to travel, the reality is: I spend the hefty majority of my time at home–with my family, in the city of Detroit. Honor & Folly is a product of wanting to interact more with other people–you know, in the face-to-face kind of way–engage in my own community, and introduce visitors to the kind of travel I love: intimate, small-scale b&bs, apartments, houses, and family-owned hotels that tell a story about their location. That create a sense of place.

My favorite part of opening Honor & Folly so far has been working with all the talented local designers, artists and artisans who have contributed handmade design and decorative objects to the space (much of it is even for sale). I love looking around and thinking about how they all spent time creating something–with their own hands–so it could be part of the Honor & Folly story. Everyone has worked so hard, and I can’t wait for guests to stay here–and to use the handmade cutting boards, sit on the wooden stools, and eat from the beautiful ceramic dinnerware by my friend Abigail Murray. I hope when travelers are thinking about coming to Detroit, they choose to stay in this small neighborhood joint, where they can go downstairs and hang out at the bar or coffee shop–and learn something about the city from people who live here. It reminds me of the way folks used to travel–a few bedrooms above the village pub or restaurant with a hearty breakfast. That’s really all you really need. Well, that and a friendly innkeeper.

Here’s the brand-new website. I hope to see you in Detroit soon!

[PHOTOS: All images by the talented Marvin Shaouni]

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My latest piece in Travel + Leisure, Peak Glamour, is a round-up of ultra-chic ski lodges in Europe. There are some pretty spectacular places on the list, including the 12-generation (!), new-and-old-world-blending Taxhof, set on a pristine mountaintop smack in the middle of the Austrian Alps.

Another place in Austria, Das Regina ended up not making the final version–because of space constraints, not worthiness. It doesn’t date back centuries like the Taxhof, but there’s a really compelling story. Nightlife entrepreneur Olaf Krohne bought the run-down, 32-room hotel two years ago and gut-renovated it to create a stylish, hipster-approved respite with Belle Epoque architecture, modern touches and some of the original furniture, like the ornate, gold Venetian beds. “It’s a little bit chic and has glamour, but you can absolutely wear a t-shirt to dinner,” says Krohne, who fell in love with the laid-back town of Bad Gastein–”the anti-St. Moritz”–as a child, “Bad Gastein used to be a place where kings and emperors came at the turn of the 19th century. The combination of urban ambiance in the middle of nature has always fascinated me. And none of the houses really fit in here… the architecture is more North Italian or they could just as well be in Vienna or Paris. These buildings are still standing and only some of them have been renovated. There are so many empty, nostalgic houses, which is why it attracts so many creatives. This place releases fantasies.”

Guests hang out in the rambling mansion, which Olaf has divided into relaxed public spaces –a homey café, restaurant, spa, living room (with visits from Berlin DJs going late into the night), and a 16-person cinema. “In the 70s Das Regina was bought by a couple who already owned several hotels in Venice. She was Austrian, he Venetian. At first they ran it by themselves but later they leased it to an Italian family. That is one of the reasons why the house has such a strange mix of Austrian, Italian and Venetian elements – like the golden beds,” explains Olaf. On the south side of the house, there’s a mountain beach created from sand from the glaciers and a big wooden terrace, where apres-ski is in full swing with open fires and an igloo. The other genius complement: the Regina Skybar–a bar Olaf built on top of the mountain. You have to take the railway up the mountain, and it looks like a giant silver UFO with a big terrace.

The Details
Prices start at $106 a night. Book it at welcomebeyond.com.

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