Amsterdam is, let’s be honest, one fine city. We won’t call it the centre of the world, we are neither nationalists nor delusional, but we will say that it has given us very little reason to leave, and yet here we are, constantly leaving. We are escapists by nature and restless by design. We do not stay in one place for long. Every 8 weeks or so, the group chat starts humming with a particular energy: links dropped without context, screenshots of hotel rooms that are “so us”, someone saying “hear me out” at 11pm, and before long, a plan has been hatched. Sometimes it materialises. Sometimes it lives in the bookmarks folder for another season. Both outcomes are valid.
This is our spring wishlist. Some of these hotels have been saved for over two years and show absolutely no signs of being booked any time soon. Others are dangerously close to becoming actual plans. A few we have visited and returned from grinning from ear to ear, in the way that only a genuinely good hotel in a genuinely good city can manage. All of them are within a car ride, a short flight, or one deeply satisfying Eurostar journey from Amsterdam. All of them are, in our completely biased and entirely enthusiastic opinion, worth it.
We are not travel journalists. We are people with passions, opinions, and a deeply inconvenient tendency to fall in love with places we cannot always immediately get to. What we can do is share them with you. The long weekend is an underrated art form. We are committed to its practice. Consider this your invitation to join us.
LONDON
Sir Hotel Devonshire Square
We love East London as much as the next person, maybe even more, and this restored 17th-century warehouse on the edge of Shoreditch is like a dream come true. Big, beautiful, spacious rooms, a sauna, a lobby bar that makes you want to cancel every plan you made and a general sense that you are, in fact, very important. We are feeling regal and we will not be taking questions.
PARIS
Hôtel Château D’Eau
We did not know we wanted a carpet-covered hotel room until this one, tucked into 10th arrondissement (PFW creatives ground zero), designed with the lacquered walls and plush seventies confidence of someone who has never second-guessed a single interior decision in their life. Tiny rooms, reasonable prices, completely unreasonable levels of chic.
ANTWERP
Hotel Pilar
We all love Antwerp. Whether you’re making the pilgrimage to the MoMu that every self-respecting fashion aficionado will be taking this spring, or simply going for a cutie long weekend of great design, good food and a town visit that reminds you why this city has been winning for years. Hotel Pilar is the perfect pied-à-terre for all of it: young, fresh, beautifully designed and sitting right in front of the Museum of Fine Arts in ‘t Zuid like it owns the place, which honestly, it does. Also do not sleep on the brasserie downstairs. The locals already haven’t and you will thank us.
BRUSSELS
The Standard
This is the elusive romcom hotel you have been searching for your entire life. Lost in Translation vibes but make it French versus Dutch, which is somehow even more cinematic. 28 floors in the Northern Quarter, minimal rooms with the type of attention to detail that makes you feel simultaneously very chic and slightly underdressed, a rooftop restaurant, and a lobby that makes you want to drink Martinis.
ATHENS
Shila
Athens has been on our wishlist for what feels like forever, and if we can have it our way, and we fully intend to, we would like to stay at Shila please and thank you. Six suites in a 1920s neoclassical residence in Kolonaki, original terrazzo floors, a courtyard garden, a rooftop terrace and a library-lounge with a piano. Adults only, which, now that we are adults, we completely understand. Some spaces must be protected. This is one of them.
Berlin
Château Royal
So grown, so sexy, so fabelhaft that we genuinely lose the ability to describe it coherently: 93 rooms each containing a unique artwork by a different contemporary artist, all of it walking distance from the Brandenburg Gate and dangerously close to the Grill Royal. Berlin has a way of making you feel like your life elsewhere is somehow insufficient and this hotel does not help with that at all. We love it here.
Marrakesh
Riad El Aaiún
We have actually been here and the fact that we are not there right now, today, as you read this, makes us quite frankly want to shed a tear. A calm oasis in the most beautifully chaotic city: rooftop tanning situation absolutely impeccable, staff so warm and genuinely lovely that you start wondering if you could just stay forever, and rooms that are big, beautiful and so considered that leaving them each morning felt like a minor personal sacrifice. We have been back in our bookmarks approximately every week since. We are not okay about it.
Amsterdam
De Durgerdam
Yes, a staycation made the list. No, we are not sorry, not even slightly. A 17th-century fisherman’s inn turned 14-room lakeside boutique hotel, fifteen minutes from the city centre, with a Michelin-pedigreed restaurant and the IJmeer as your front garden. The concept of leaving Amsterdam to stay just outside Amsterdam has never felt so genuinely inspired.
Fuerteventura
Casa Montelongo
We are sun chasers at heart, and trust, we shall be there. Two adults-only suites hidden behind an unremarkable door in a quiet northern Fuerteventura village, designed by a Canarian architect using only local materials and running entirely on solar power, and with a beautiful ambiance. We are coming for you, Casa Montelongo. Sit tight.
Sintra
Marqi
A Danish photographer buys a strange 1980s mansion on a winding road in the Sintra hills, fills it with one-of-a-kind vintage furniture sourced from a pandemic road trip around Portugal, calls the whole thing “one very strange hotel” and somehow creates the most effortlessly cool boutique hideaway in the country. Vintage Mercedes, vinyl player, nightly lobby cocktails, no booking website. Cult following fully deserved.
Sicily
Elle Dimora di Sicilia
Three suites overlooking Catania’s Roman amphitheatre. Home to centuries of drama, the biggest of which would frankly be us not being there. Mysterious, indulgent and designed with the kind of personal touch that makes you feel like you’ve stumbled into a very stylish secret. Breakfast on the rooftop, Mount Etna in the background, Sicilian cannoli within reach. We absolutely need to be here and we are saying that with full sincerity and zero chill.
