St Regis

St. Regis puts its effort into the arrival. In Singapore they collect you from the airport in a Bentley Flying Spur. In Venice you come in by water taxi to the hotel’s own dock on the Grand Canal.

Singapore keeps a private art collection and you meet it at the door: a Botero sculpture in the entrance, a huge antique Chinese painting behind reception, Picassos and Mirós through the rest of the place. The Astor Bar has more than 200 whiskies and invents a new Bloody Mary every month, the drink having started at the original St. Regis in New York. My pick was the Chili Padi Mary, the one with local chili in it. The braised bird’s nest at Yan Ting, in pumpkin and black truffle sauce, was too slimy for me — my palate, not the kitchen. At the spa, two therapists worked on my facial and my pedicure at the same time. That pedicure is buffed rather than painted, so I painted my toes myself a few hours later.

Venice is five palaces from the 18th and 19th centuries, joined by corridors. The oldest belonged to the Tiepolo family, who gave the city two doges — a kind of civil magistrate — and the painter Giambattista Tiepolo. Another was once the San Moisè Theatre. Monet stayed in 1908, when the place was called the Hotel Britannia, and said it had some of the most beautiful views in Venice. Downstairs at La Cusina, Chef Fol’s advice was to finish with the cheesecake — yogurt ice cream, berries sautéed in basil. But it’s the terrace off our suite we remember: a bottle of wine, boats going by on the canal, the best view we saw in the city. Monet was right.