The New Breed of Motel

It’s not really our brand at Blue Hill Properties, where we’re focused on a more luxurious experience, but one of our favorite trends in hospitality is what we’ll call the new motel—high in style, conveniently located, typically approachably priced, and with true individuality.

Today, we’ll highlight just two near us in the northeast. The first is Tourists, located in the Berkshires just off the Mohawk Trail so it’s perfect for anyone seeking a great hike and a stylish place to sleep. On the banks of the Hoosic River, Tourists is the brainchild of Wilco bassist John Stirratt and friends, and is a kind of hip summer camp for adults. With a saltwater pool, a suspension bridge, and a Civil War-era mill, the grounds invite exploration, but it’s also great for a visit to Mass MoCA and other Berkshires destinations.

Our second featured property today is the Brentwood in Saratoga Springs. Located trackside by the legendary racecourse, the Brentwood is a remastered motel with terrific style, combining Billykirk leathers, Sharktooth textiles, period works of art, and lots of brass highlights. It’s a darker, moodier look than Tourists, but to our minds has a Madmen vibe that is perfect for the era of the original buildings. Paint colors are dark greens and blues, and the bar is impeccable. Off-season prices are insanely affordable—as I write I’m seeing a nightly rate UNDER $100. So it’s an easy discovery.

Of course, a visit to a Blue Hill Properties destination is always in order, so check out The Jackson House Inn—and book your romantic getaway now. (Yes, Yankee magazine named us Best Couples Retreat.)

The Perfect Hunting Lodge on the Isle of Skye

Today we venture further north, and almost as west as you can go and still be in the United Kingdom--to the Isle of Skye just off the western coast of the Scottish Highlands, a semi-mystical place where the winds come in strong off the Atlantic, the views are unparalleled--and increasingly some of the finest food in Britain is to be found. Kinloch Lodge is one of our two favorite destinations on the Isle of Skye (someday we'll write about the other), a former sixteenth-century hunting lodge and later family home to the Macdonalds, who still own the property today. The setting is as fine as any in Europe, on the south side of island just a short drive from Skye Bridge, with views that are simply epic. The approach to the lodge on the shores of Loch na Dal fulfills every fantasy one might have of the Inner Hebrides, the island chain of which this is a part. And the interiors achieve just the kind of balance we like: posh and extraordinarily comfortable, but with the feeling of being in the home of a rather grand friend. From tartans to tweeds, to the wall mounted stags' heads, the whole is just what we love at Blue Hill Properties.

It was renowned chef and food writer Claire Macdonald who set Kinloch Lodge on the path to greatness in the hospitality world, and though Claire and her husband Godfrey have handed over the reins to their daughter, Isabella, the standards for food and the infinite kindnesses of the staff are undiminished. On the culinary front, this is the achievement of the wondrous and inimitable Marcello Tully, who draws heavily on the island's bounty to create the perfect ways for presenting the region's seafood, vegetables--and its whiskeys. Breakfasts are simple but superb with possibly the best Scottish porridge we've ever tasted. Even the tap water has a hint of peat in its flavors; there's bottled water if you prefer, but shouldn't we really feel where we are when we travel?

Two Forms of Perfection in Ireland

Some years ago I wrote a book on Irish painting, and spent many months there doing research and meeting artists--and not incidentally dining and lodging very handsomely. So perhaps it's not surprising that at year's end, I'm feeling a bit nostalgic, and will share thoughts on two of Ireland's best country house hotels--Ballyfin, which is regularly invoked as Ireland's most exclusive hotel, and Waterford Castle, recently acquired and given fresh life.

Ballyfin in County Laois occupies an unrivaled setting. The demesne’s mile-long meandering driveway, its private lake, broad sweep of gravel, and huge porticoed entrance, all create an impression of extraordinary grandeur--which is surely the point. Guests are formally welcomed on the steps and cars and bags are whisked away. The front door opens into a hallway with two standout features – the antlers of a great Irish elk that perished in a bog more than 2,000 years ago, and a Roman mosaic floor brought back from the Grand Tour in the early 19th century by Ballyfin's fabulously wealthy owners Sir Charles and Lady Caroline Coote. Their personal motto “Cost what it may” is evident everywhere, in the fine plasterwork ceilings, the magnificent windows and door cases, the parquet flooring, chimney pieces and columns that appear to be marble but are painted timber – a process that actually cost seven times more than the polishing of mere marble.

Check-in takes place in the Whispering Room, so called because two people standing in opposite corners can hear each other’s whispers thanks to the curved construction of the ceiling. An inner hallway with main staircase hung with portraits of Cootes family members through the ages leads through to a series of eye-popping reception rooms where fires burn through the day and guests sink down into innumerable comfortable armchairs and sofas.

Once settled in, there are almost 10 miles of paths throughout the walled estate. Boating, fishing, shooting, archery and trips through the grounds in a horse-drawn carriage can all be arranged on site. All of this in its modern-day incarnation is the dream of an American industrialist with an Irish-born wife, whose dream project Ballyfin's rescue has been. Such a property will surely never turn a profit.

And yet.

As extraordinary as Ballyfin is, its perfection invites hushed voices. Its polish may be as much about the idea of historic luxury as it is the reality of being comfortably cosseted. While also certainly luxurious, Waterford Castle affords a more intimate kind of indulgence. Accessed only by ferry, arrival itself is a thrilling process, with the lights of the imposing centuries-old building blinking in the darkness beyond. A short, beech-lined drive leads to the castle entrance, where thick sprays of ivy decorate ancient Portland stone walls, complete with leaded glass windows and rooftop gargoyles.

Inside, the aura of history is deepened by Elizabethan oak paneling, graceful arches, and a fine sixteenth-century plaster ceiling. The décor is a mashup of periods, as it would have been in a house that passed through generations in the same family: a pair of George III carved cabinets meet a Louis XVI Aubusson tapestry meet plenty of richly carved Victorian pieces. 

The dining room continues the manorial style of Waterford Castle, with oak paneling, an ornate oak mantelpiece, and another exquisite plaster ceiling. After dinner, a guest might retire to the Fitzgerald room, named after a prominent family that owned the castle from around 1160 to the mid-1900s. Here, in an intimate setting, deep-set sofas and soft lighting encourage relaxation and a sense of true ease. A short walk before bed might lead to the sight of a herd of delicate Sika deer, who were introduced to this 310-acre island hideaway years ago and have made it their own.

Decadent Design Perfection from Jasper Conran

Our second stop today is the Hotel Marrakech, designed by the man who was once Princess Diana's favorite designer, Jasper Conran, but don't hold that against him. His Moroccan riad is a cathedral to good taste, a converted 19th-century palace containing five suites of four-posters swathed in a total of nearly a mile of white voile, set around a quadrangle of orange trees and a pretty tiled fountain.

The place radiates the sort of 1930s decadence once found in Tangiers, due in part to its private-house feel, but also the simple elegance, the pinks and greens, the oil paintings of maharajas, the period jazz emanating from a hidden radio.

A return to Marrakech and this fantastic and fantastical addition to the boutique hotel scene is high on our wanderlist for 2018.

British Inspiration

Our inspiration for creating a certain kind of locally inspired, design infused hotel in the country derives primarily from the tradition of the country house hotel in England and its Irish cousin. Not the dark country house hotels of the past, but light-infused, color-rich properties of a type you now find inhabiting the landscape in an easy-going way all across the U.K. Below are a few of our current favorites.

It must be something about Britain's small scale--and thus the relative proximity to London and its population--base that make this possible economically. Some of the finest in recent years can be found across the southwest, from Somerset to Dorset and Cornwall. Each of the best of these doesn't forget where it is in the world even as it puts forward design to savor. And great food is never lost in the equation!

Inspiration in the Catskills

I often say that I'm shameless about borrowing a good idea--and certainly this is true of drawing inspiration from the hospitality sector. What's inspiring me today is the work of one couple in the Catskills region of New York State who are singlehandedly transforming the lodging and restaurant scene there. Catskills native Sims Foster and his wife, Kirsten Harlow Foster, are using his hospitality smarts and an “I’ll do it” work ethic to breathe new life into the area by opening three inns: The Arnold House, which opened with a restaurant in 2014 atop a mountain just outside Livingston Manor; the Nine River Road, in a renovated old home overlooking the Delaware River in Callicoon; and the North Branch Country Inn, also with a restaurant, in North Branch, which was just named one of the “Best Bed and Breakfast Inns in America” by Time Out New York magazine. Next up is the DeBruce, set to open next month--and if it's even half as good as the beautiful trailer video produced by Bullrush Films https://vimeo.com/211406224 it should be terrific.

The best in experiential travel

I've been traveling since I was three months old--or so says my mother, who strapped me to her front and took me from the U.S. to India, with stops all through Europe en route, to rejoin my father. I doubt that was the origin of my love of travel, but it can't have hurt that travel was always a part of the tapestry of my life.

In adulthood, two or three experiences whetted a long-held desire to not only experience the world but to shape the experience of travel for others. The first was the experience of remaking a long-cherished ancestral manse into a country house hotel--one that survives (under another identity) today. But I wasn't ready yet to give up my first career path, so once the property was ready to roll I stepped aside--having shaped for it a distinct personality. The second was a kind of informal apprenticeship alongside the great food visionary Alice Waters, who reshaped my understanding of what food and a great restaurant should be and gave me a new commitment to the pathways of the food I eat (and serve). In the mid 1990s, this wasn't yet commonplace, but today's farm-to-fork concepts resonate. And I shall never forget some of the lessons I learned from Alice--from the importance of training every staff member in the art of proper tea making, to the beauty or vegetables so fresh they were still warm from the fields.

Through a 25-year career in the arts, I've had extraordinary travel experiences and discovered too many intimate hotels and restaurants to begin to name them here. But cumulatively these experiences have shaped my idea of what should define the core identity of Blue Hill Properties. I've taken a little from each experience, and more than a little from a few: The Clifton Inn outside Charlottesville, Virginia. The Hotel Fauchere in Milford, Pennsylvania. The Inn at Little Washington in Washington, Virginia. The Covent Garden Hotel in London. All of these inspire me and haunt my memory in ways small and large, and provide the foundation for the work ahead for Blue Hill Properties.