Category: hotel

Our next overnight on winter break was St Louis — I think I’ve maybe been once but unsure, and I know the kids haven’t been. We stayed at the Ritz-Carlton, which is technically in Clayton, Missouri. It was such a great stay, in most part to the hotel being decorated so beautifully for the holidays.

My fave R-C bathrooms are the ones in which they’ve done them in all white/grey marble like this one and the one in New Orleans. If I can ever line things up to renovate my bathrooms at home, at least one of them is going to be like this (there’s a part of me that also wants to do one of them as an ***all-red bathroom*** like my Aunt Helen had — the entrance to it was even long red beads. Also: she had an orange kitchen. She had indoor grass in one of the bedrooms. She kept the plastic on the furniture because it was soooo fiiiiiiine. She was, to child-me, a design goddess.). But back to that, um, bathroom, yes to timeless marble, though I’d rather they’d have done a marble facing on the bathtub:

There was a small balcony.

Elevator bank

We were there on Christmas Eve, and the main restaurant was serving a prix fixe holiday supper. We just wanted simple food, so we ate in the Lobby Lounge which was a terrific setting. There was living room type seating and it was just the right balance of comfortable and nice.

If I lived in St Louis and wanted to take my kids for holiday pics, I’d most certainly come to the R-C for lunch or supper and take advantage of all the decorations for a great setting.

It was all decorated beautifully — and the centerpiece was this fab gingerbread snowglobe

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We got to the arch too late in the day for a tour, and Ted Drewes closed early for the holiday, but the next day we got to see some pretty great Route 66 signs:

Gardenway Motel, Gray Summit MO

Sunset Motel, Villa Ridge MO

The Bourbon, MO water tower

Jesus, King of the Road in Cuba MO

Wagon Wheel Motel, also on Route 66 in Cuba, Missouri

Over winter break, we took a big trip, and our first overnight was at the 21C Museum Hotel in Louisville, Kentucky. This is our fifth 21C ; Bentonville is our fave. The room here is nice but pretty vanilla, and Labor and Materials is the big exhibit going on soooo, but there was plenty going on anyway…

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In the museum, our faves:

Daniel Jackson, The Thousand Yard Stare which is an imaginary self-portrait of the artist “slicing vinyl records and drinking beer while a crow rests on his shoulder”

Virgil Marti’s Landscape Wallpaper which is screen printed fluorescent and rayon flock on paper utilizing blacklights

Camille Utterback and Romy Achitv’s Text Rain, which drops video letters on people but it’s actually the words to a poem by Evan Zimroth

outside, the super-fun 21C pomegranate Lincoln limousine — and if I had any sense, I would have asked the valet about getting a ride because the boys would have just eaten that up

also, outside, Serkan Özkaya’s David sculpture, which the 21C brought here from Istanbul

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And

We visited The Brown Hotel, which was lovely (and from where the Hot Brown originated)

and decided to have supper across the street from the 21C at Mussel & Burger Bar which was delicious

There was also a delightful 80s sweater sighting the next day at Nord’s Bakery

Okay! Next stop: St Louis and Route 66

We had an amazing weekend in Atlanta. It was part of Shugie’s birthday, and he loves

• a/ great restaurants, which, ha. We really didn’t go anywhere great, and the most interesting thing we did was get carry-out from BurgerIM (see?) an Israeli hamburger chain (due to wanting to be in the room for the Bama-LSU game). The boys said the hamburger tasted like Five Guys, so pretty meh to them, but I had a grilled chicken which was delish.
• b/ great hotels, and while we didn’t stay at his fave, the Atlanta Ritz, we did stay at an Autograph Collection, which had more character than your garden variety Marriott.
• c/ cars, and he totally scored in that regard

We checked in Friday evening at the Hotel at Avalon, in Alpharetta. Avalon, as it turns out, is a shopping village including valet service, with the usuals (Williams-Sonoma, Crate & Barrel, Pottery Barn, etc) but also Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams, Sundance, a pretty big Apple store

— and because I’m always trying to get that good-Mommy gold star, a Tesla dealership. Or Tesla shop? Or Tesla place-where-they-have-a-three-cars and you-can-place-an-order?

The people there are super nice. Shug was spending quality time at Apple, and Shugie and I went over to look at our choices. I’m open to getting a Tesla at some point, but really would like to wait until the battery will allow more output in miles. I like driving in the middle of nowhere and not have to really consider tethering myself to a radius involving a 240v outlet. Shugie on the other hand, is just in love with cars and they were so kind in showing him how to open the door (make an ‘L’ shape with your hand, press down on one side), encouraging him to get behind the wheel, answer his questions, and we talked colors and wood trim. I was starting to come around by the time it was time to go.

A cousin of ours has a couple of Teslas and really enjoys them, and maybe Shugie will get one when it’s time.

We also drove over to the Lamborghini dealership. They were incredibly nice and helpful there, too. I joked to the salesman that our family “are merely Lexus drivers” (but let’s not forget I drove a series of junky cars in college which included a LeBaron with a blown head gasket that was eventually also a car-b-que, a Buick sporting a lovely primer & Bondo combination, and okay another Buick that had such substantial electrical problems that I was out an alternator every couple of months). Anyway, we had a good laugh about it — I didn’t want him to think we were truly in the market for a $100k+ car — but explained how much Shugie loves next-level cars, and we were encouraged to look at everything, ask any questions, etc.

Shugie would really like to get some sort of internship at Lamborghini in college, and in the next couple of years take a factory tour, and we were even told who to get in contact with in Atlanta and Italy to get that scheduled when we’re ready. Just so, so, so nice and helpful.

Motorcars of Atlanta also stocks Rolls Royce, Aston Martin, McLaren…

And here is a $1M McLaren that is truly a work of art

Our stay was at the Hotel at Avalon, part of Marriott’s Autograph Collection. Very pretty, and we were within super-easy walking distance to all the shops and the theater there. The boys were very happy to wear the robes provided. We’ll definitely consider staying here again.

Ummm I ordinarily wouldn’t share this pic but the library wallpaper here is something else:

Oh! Marriott is in the midst of a roll-out of bulk toiletries rather than the little individual bottles of shampoo, conditioner, etc. and here, they were stocked with fabulous Molton Brown in Indian Cress for hair, and body wash and lotion in Orange & Bergamot. Love.

Earlier this year, we took the opportunity to visit the Henderson Park Inn in Destin, Florida again. It’s been voted the, and one of the, ‘Most Romantic Inn(s) in America’ by publications, and I mean…it’s pretty fab. I have two kids, so my hotel stays are usually along the Marriott and Hilton lines rather than amazing tiny B&Bs, but I get it.

The one thing I do want to point out especially is that they call themselves a B&B, but in my mind, a B&B is when you’re staying upstairs in the ‘Miss Cavanaugh Room’ at…you know…Barbara and Steve’s dream Victorian somewhere and secretly inside you’re all “where’s the tv?” but decide to roll with it and it’s fine, and in the morning you saunter down to the crazy formal dining room for their amazing cinnamon rolls and heritage breed sausage from Old Man Phillips’ farm and there’s perfectly-done eggs and just-squeezed orange juice and wanna-make-that-a-mimosa?whysuuuure.

Here, it really is more of a hotel. There’s a fridge in the main building with drinks you can take all day, and there’s a great breakfast with a smiling omelette guy ready to put whatever you want in that skillet, and there’s a sack lunch included to take for wherever you’re jetting off to during the day. There’s a happy hour at which I think giddily ingested three (free) glasses of merlot while on a swing just watching the waves go back and forth. But there are no ‘innkeepers’ and you don’t have to worry about making too much noise walking on creaky floors, or waking someone if you come in too late from supper.

Henderson Park Inn is situated right at a state park, so there is no development whatsoever on one side of the beach. The people staying there are nice-nice and the staff is super friendly.

Our room. Turndown chocolate is a Lindor truffle (though some local-ish chocolate would have been super nice), and we had a welcome gift of their own cookbook, which was a great touch. 

This tray with roses, wine, and fruit was also set out

There’s more than one grouping of rooms at the Inn, and this was the lobby at our small building. 

This is Destin, so copious amounts of time was spent on the beach. The sand really is sugar white and is so soft that it feels almost like walking on cake flour

There didn’t seem to be a lot of regular jellyfish in the water, but we did see this beautiful Portuguese Man O’ War and a couple others (if you’re feeling technical, this is not really a jellyfish, but the big thing to remember here is that you can get stung by this monster’s tentacles even with it beached like this, and it will seriously destroy your next few days if so)

We had supper one evening at the on-site restaurant, the Beach Walk Cafe (reservations also available on OpenTable, so easy-easy), which was completely lovely (and my pics here are not at all doing it justice)

There was an amuse, an app of shrimp cocktail and other of Kung Pao shrimp, a steak, and pork chop, all of which were delectable. Old-school but still charming that way, all the women leave with a single stem rose

What’s pretty new is The Henderson, their family hotel across the street. The takeaway is that Henderson Park Inn is for couples and The Henderson is for the kids and grandparents…everybody. It’s not *on* the beach, but they have a great pool and looooook how comfortable and lovely the rooms are. There’s tons and tons to do every day as well.

Staying at either place, guests are welcome to swim at The Henderson, as there’s no pool at all at the HPI.

And the lobby. The lobbyyyyyyy. Yassss.

The chandelier. My love.

We’ll definitely consider this hotel the next time we come down with the boys. Lovely.