The Finer Things

A blog about two brothers who believe luxury hotels are wasted on the wealthy.

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Lunatics Dressed as Girlfriends

Guadalmina Golf Hotel, San Pedro, Spain

In my time on the road, I've stayed in many luxury hotels all over the world. My absolute favourite by far has to be the Guadalmina Golf Hotel. Standing right on the beach, it is decorated lavishly, cool marble and granite surfaces providing welcome relief from the baking heat of the Spanish summer. 

I was travelling with my girlfriend at the time, and met up with my brother and his wife, Sophie. They were sat at a table in the open air hotel restaurant, dressed in white like drug kingpins, sipping champagne with plates of shellfish and cured meats in front of them. 

Now, I need to go back a little bit. This girlfriend of mine, Melanie, was a challenging person to be around sometimes. I wasn't concerned about her minor personality quirks: the constant freezing of milk so we'd 'always have milk', the obsession with collectible china figurines, the claims that she had 'invented' lattes...no, all of that was tolerable. It was the dangerous mood swings I couldn't handle. We'd be in love like Disney characters one minute, and the next she'd be trying to kill me with a brick. 

So when we got to this luxury hotel and that magnificent table, overlooking the beach and rolling waves, I was a little paranoid about my guest. We sat down and my brother immediately began regaling Mel and Sophie with a story about the time he streaked through a nightclub back home. I remember it well, since I was the one who had to take him home after he was thrown out by the surprised (but very angry) bouncers. I had to lend him my jacket so he wouldn't freeze to death.

Mel looks at me and smiles through the story. Maybe we're going to be okay, I thought. I sipped my champagne, ordered a couple of carafes of sangria and relaxed to the enjoy the feast. And what a feast! There were tables and tables of fresh food, all of it utterly delicious. It was one of those rare occasions where you wish you had the appetite and staying power of John Goodman on a binge. My stomach was physically not big enough to accommodate everything I wanted to eat and drink. The waiters were bringing us plates of tomato and mozzarella as fast as we could eat them, and I kept returning from the grill station with succulent lamb steaks practically coated in salt. 

It's at this point that Sophie makes a remark about the exceptional quality of the food being the "best she's ever tasted". I'm about to agree with her when Mel picks up a champagne flute and throws the drink in Sophie's face.

"I knew you didn't like my cooking," Mel growls at her.

I have no idea what to say. Stunned silence at our table, and even at adjacent tables, as everyone turns to watch the theatre play out before them. Is she joking? 

TBC.

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Mudrin Hotel, Boryeong, South Korea

The Boryeong Mud festival is a weekend of fun so debauched it needs to be on every self-respecting traveler’s wish list. To some of the more adventurous Koreans, it’s a chance to let their hair down. For the American GIs, it’s a chance to blow off steam. For the Boryeong locals it’s a chance to make stacks of cash. And for me…well, it was my chance to enjoy the whole absurd carnival of it.

Having read online beforehand about the no-holds-barred nature of the festival, I decided to check myself into the finest and most prominent hotel in town, the Mudrin. When I arrived in the afternoon, the place was already in full swing, but you wouldn’t have known it inside the Mudrin. The swirling madness was kept strictly at the door, and the calm tranquility of the inside came as a shock akin to rolling in the snow after a sauna.

If the lobby had seemed like a safe haven, my room in this luxury hotel felt like it was on a different planet. I had a magnificent view of the entire beach. There were people in the water for miles, throngs of them hugging the coastline and partying on the beaches all the way up the sand. I knew several of my friends would sleeping in the pensions, and some of them would probably end up sleeping on the beach itself. I glanced around my pristine surrounds and hoped that it would look as good in the morning.

Having changed, I clambered downstairs and gleefully braved the maelstrom. There was a central area with bouncy castle rides that would coat you in mud from head to foot in grey mud, as well as offering the opportunity to mud-wrestle with between 10 and 20 perfect strangers. At one point I’d battled my way to a standing position only to have my legs whipped out from underneath me in the slime, much to the small audience’s enjoyment.

This was followed by Korean fighter jets putting on an extended airshow over the beach. Everywhere you looked people were buying soju and cases of beer and sharing them with anybody they liked. Korean photographers from every media outlet under the sun took pictures of the revellers, including me wearing the sunglasses I found in the sea and coated in grey goop.

As night fell, the party atmosphere cranked up- fairy lights and neon strips glowed everywhere you looked. Having washed off most of the mud, my friends and I walked along the beach front, enjoying the opulent fireworks display and the barbecued shellfish being sold from carts. The whole experience morphed into one gargantuan celebration, although what we were celebrating I couldn’t have said. It seemed as if the entire world stayed out until the sun began to come up.

While my friends shivered their way through the cool early morning and coastal winds, I woke up warm and comfortable and filthy with a massive grin on my face. The Mudrin did not let me down.

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La Mauricia

When we were kids, Matthew once found a 5,000 peseta note on the bottom of a swimming pool in Marbella. He bought ice cream every day for weeks with it. Ever since that day, he has routinely checked the swimming pool for cash in every hotel we have stayed in. He has not found any money up to this point, but that hasn't stopped him from trying.

  We arrived at Le Mauricia sure of only two things—the first, that our cab driver from the airport drove like a lunatic. The second, that this hotel was spectacular. White columns framed the door, at the end of a long driveway that spoke of seclusion and grandeur. We were greeted at the door with smiles, which struck a nice contrast with our cabbie, who apparently was so overcome with bloodlust he didn't care if the life he took was his own.

  Our room was actually two, split by an adjoining door. Out back, a small garden with sliding glass patio doors and a terrace. I decided to shower and change into a set of clothes that didn't smell like too many hours on a plane. Matthew was already spread-eagled on his bed, unconscious. No point trying to wake him—I'd need a marching band. Looks like I'm exploring this place by myself.

  The hotel restaurant was a buffet type set up, with tables surrounding the smaller of the two swimming pools, gently lit by small white lights and table-top candles. It was mostly families there, with a few couples, and then there was me. I sat down and fervently wished I'd had the foresight to bring a book. Now, the etiquette of a buffet is somewhat difficult when you're a lone traveller. When you get up, you leave your table unattended, and there's always the fear that you come back to find it occupied by someone else. Then there's the actual returning with the food—with other people, it's like a movable feast, a joyous fluid experience in dining. Doing it lone-wolf style kind of feels like sitting down at a dining table in a prison where it's every man for himself. If it weren't for the elegant decor and the warm atmosphere I'd be watching out for that one psychotic inmate that seems to have it in for the hero of the story.

  However, the entire evening takes an upturn when I realise that the man on the next table along from me is none other than Björn Borg. Just sitting there, like a normal person, with his family. Now, for those people who don't know who this man is—Borg was one of the greatest tennis players in history. I don't even watch tennis that much, but I know this guy. Luckily, his family doesn't notice me staring from the other table, not even looking at my food as I fork it into my mouth. 

I love the style, more than anything.

Usually, I'd never have the gumption to approach a celebrity. Not least because there's the suspicion, deep down, that they'd love to be left alone. I don't want to be that guy. But the combination of sleep deprivation, being alone in a new place, and the fact that his family looks happier than I've ever been in my entire life…well, it pushed me over the edge. I grabbed a napkin, and started to walk over, hoping I'd see a pen in between his table and mine. Maybe on the floor?

  However, as I begin my fan's pilgrimage, I hear this rush from behind me. It's Matthew, screeching joyfully as he dives into the pool. Several people get up from their tables, including Borg, to see the madman crawling along the base of the pool. I sigh and sit back down to enjoy what really was some fantastic food, as I watch my brother scour another pool for cash.

  He didn't find any.

[hopfinerthings-blog]

Busan Park Hyatt

It was late when we arrived, and our brains were fried from the long journey. Given that it was a long haul flight, Matt had deemed it acceptable to take off most of his clothes and hunker down under his airline blanket as if he were in bed at home. We were flying coach, and I was not the only one sat next to him. We'd exchanged terse words about his nakedness on planes before, but the genuine risk of being arrested never seemed to get through to Matt. I'd long since ceased attempting to explain it to him.

            "I just want to be comfortable…jeez," was a common refrain.

            Apparently still frustrated with my reaction to his travelling 'style', he stamped off to the room and left me to go through some of our itinerary details at the front desk. The bilingual girl on duty was so put together and professional it made me feel like some crazed hillbilly wandering in from an isolated backwater. I had that moment I often have when I check into a luxury hotel—the paranoid fear that the clerk will figure me out and identify me as an unwelcome interloper. Klaxon alarms will ring and burly security guards will fling me bodily out of the front doors.

            I'd only been about half an hour, but by the time I got to the room, Matt had already gotten bored. I heard splashing, and discovered that he had run himself a bubble bath. He was now lounging—fully clothed—watching Korean baseball in among the bubbles and drinking a beer from the mini-fridge.

            The bathroom itself was a testament to style, my brother's presence aside. Double sinks, tall mirrors and a suspiciously difficult-to-operate shower all hinted at wealth and taste. I laid out my toiletries (which I knew Matthew would later steal) around one of the sinks, and sat next to the bath to watch the baseball.

  There was a futon type couch and a double bed—we flipped for it, and for once I actually won. Grumbling, Matt began to take pictures of the night time view. We tried to turn the lights off so he could get a better shot, but there was a whole console of buttons next to the bed that our scrambled monkey brains couldn't figure out. To a bystander looking in, it must have looked like the room was possessed—curtains and blackouts rising and lowering, various lights flicking on and off, dimmer switches turning light then dark. And of course, plenty of loud, unnecessary cursing.

  I was woefully underprepared for how comfortable the bed was. Since I save all my spare cash for travelling, my apartments have tended to be somewhat Spartan, including the beds. You know the kind—either the mattress is so thin it doesn't actually have any springs in it, or it is thick and feels like it's carved out of rock.

            I spread out like an intoxicated starfish, drunk with the comfort, and grinning.

            "How's the futon?" I called out, too lazy to raise my head.

            "Shut up."

  Matthew had his revenge—he snores like you wouldn't believe, cutting through earplugs and headphones with ease. You wonder, red-eyed and awake in the middle of the night, if he's trying to inhale his own lung.

            We always shared a bedroom as little kids, and I remember the day I got my own room for the first time. I thought I'd gone deaf.

  *

  Serve me a coffee in a cardboard tumbler and I'm a worker bee, off to slave away in the hive. Serve me the exact same coffee in a standard white china cup, and suddenly I'm the Prince of Monaco. Matthew and I healthily abused the breakfast buffet as we overlooked the rather magnificent Gwangan suspension bridge. I wasn't especially hungry, but my brother ordered several omelettes to our table so I was forced to eat for fear of appearing grotesquely wasteful.

            "Why the bloody hell did you ask for so many?"

            "I thought they'd be smaller," he admitted, shovelling egg into his mouth.

  It was not the first time I had been to Busan. Last time, I had slept fitfully on the beach, under a towel, shivering as a horrendous volume of alcohol left my body.

  I sipped my coffee, marvelling at the sunshine and the sea from fifty floors up. This way was better.

(September 2013)