Lifestyle
Send a Postcard From Antarctica, Overnight in Winston Churchill’s Former War Office, and Other Things to Bookmark This May
Impressing friends at the most expensive Airbnb in Australasia is also an option.
BY Mary Gostelow  |  May 5, 2023
4 Minute Read
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Sleep in Winston Churchill’s one-time office at Raffles London at The OWO. The 120-key hotel, opening in late June, is a meticulous conversion of the UK’s Old War Office, built in 1906 at a then-exorbitant cost of £1.3 million to house those who protected the nation.

The Drawing Room
Image courtesy of Raffles London at The OWO

Robb Report Hong Kong had a hotel preview. The suite where Churchill worked, when Minister of War, looks directly across Whitehall at mounted guardsmen wearing scarlet cloaks and feather busbies. Soaring panelled walls are complemented by designer Thierry Despont’s softening skills. The five-sided hotel’s main entrance, on Whitehall, opens to a super-imposing 55-step Piastraccia marble grand staircase leading up to a heritage gold clock from France. Corridors around the seven-floor building in all offer 2.5 miles of walking, much around inner courtyards and gardens. Three restaurants are run by Mauro Colagreco. Hotel MD, by the way, is sartorial leader of style Philippe Leboeuf, recognisable for Berluti shoes and Lalique cufflinks, and his often-present English Border Terrier Archie, VP of pet relations.

Pop-up martini bar at The Londoner
Image courtesy of The Londoner

Anyone in England for the coronation on 6 May can get a visual flavour of Raffles London at The OWO by walking around its exterior and gazing through the windows into Colagreco’s dining venues, with chefs possibly trialling dishes in glass-walled kitchens. 10 minutes’ walk away, however, at The Londoner in Leicester Square, a pop-up martini bar is more than ready for business. Special concoctions include a His Majesty martini, with Belvedere vodka, Noilly Prat vermouth, and Veuve Clicquot. Celebrate with Fine de Claire oysters, served with lemon crème fraiche and green tabasco truffle oil.

Yamazaki 50-Year-Old 2005 First Release
Image courtesy of Sotheby’s

Sotheby’s 50th Anniversary is being celebrated in Hong Kong with some significant auctions—and not only in art. A Hermès Feathers So Black Kelly handbag made HK$2.03 million the other day. The Emperor’s Treasure, necklace of 43 imperial green jadeite beads with diamond and ruby clasp, realised HK$61.49 million. It is thought there are, at most, only a dozen bottles of Yamazaki 50-Year-Old 2005 First Release left anywhere, worldwide, and a passionate whisky lover successfully bid HK$4.8 million for one, at the same auction.

Haute Couture Eiffel Suite at Hôtel Plaza Athénée
Image courtesy of Hôtel Plaza Athénée and Mark Read

On the drinks side, the ultimate bubbly is surely Laurent-Perrier’s Salon, from 50-year-old vineyards in Le Mesnil-sur-Oger, in the Champagne appellation (Jeremiah Tower, star of Netflix’s The Last Magnificent, raves about it). The only problem is that the best vintage, Salon Blanc De Blancs le Mesnil Champagne 1999, is almost extinct. Robb Report Hong Kong has, however, found two bottles at Hôtel Plaza Athénée in Paris. Who cares that the cost of one is more than an overnight in, say, the hotel’s 130-square-metre third-floor signature Haute Couture Eiffel Suite, with a baby grand piano, Guerlain toiletries, and French windows that open to an uninterrupted Eiffel Tower view? And while you are there, revel in a 90-minute body massage at the Dior Spa, perhaps followed by brioche Marie-Antoinette caviar and Catherine de Medici’s sea bass and artichokes at the hotel’s Michelin-starred eponymous restaurant, Jean Imbert au Plaza Athenée.

CEO and co-founder of comparison site finder.com, Fred Schebesta, calls his Australian home not after himself but his passion—he bought bundles of Bitcoins at US$4,000 (the price on 15 April 2023 was US$30,000). Schebesta’s Sydney pad, Crypto Castle, is currently touted as Australasia’s most expensive Airbnb at US$16,691 a night. Impress friends or whomever with the five-bedroom abode, the whole designed by Renato D’Ettorre to look like “a moated castle floating above the ocean.”

Le Boreal cruise
Image courtesy of APT

Impress again? Send folks snail-mail letters or cards from Antarctica. Yes, real, old-fashioned mail postmarked Port Lockroy, birthplace of the British Antarctic Survey (BAS). The base has three buildings, one a museum, shop, and post office. Best Antarctic weather is mid-December through February, which is perfect timing to consider APT’s 13-night, 200-passenger Le Boreal cruise (it also takes in the volcanic caldera of Deception Island, and there are numerous expeditions to visit penguin rookeries, seal colonies, and orca, humpback, and minke whale watching). Start 3 February 2024, with three nights at Buenos Aires’s signature Alvear Palace. Tango and street-art education there, and board to sail to the penguins.