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.