Michael Nassar

When people think of St. Andrew’s, Scotland, they think of the Old Course and the birthplace of golf.  And while that’s true,  what many people don’t realize is that St. Andrews was an important ecclesiastical center during the Medieval Period and remained so until after the Reformation.  When St. Andrews Cathedral was consecrated in 1318 it was the most important church in Scotland in addition to being the largest building in the country.

You’ve got a long weekend and you’d love to get away—a real getaway this time, to a place with a different culture, unique food, and maybe a bit of warmth. But you’ve only got three days. What to do?

Try this: from the east coast of the U.S., a four hour flight will take you from Boston to São Miguel in the Azores, a string of green jewels sitting in the middle of the Atlantic just waiting for you to explore.

You’ll land in Ponta Delgada, the capital and largest city in São Miguel, where you could spend the entire weekend exploring the historic sites and shops, walking narrow streets past colorful chapels and open-air markets. But then you’d miss some of the most stunning scenery on the planet.

So rent a car and head west to the Sete Cidades (Seven Cities) region, where a short hike rewards you with breathtaking views of volcanic crater lakes, lush hillsides that sweep down to deep blue-green water. (The Azores were formed by volcanic action and the remnants of that activity is evident everywhere.) You’ll be traveling on a long and winding road that leads around São Miguel, where every turn rewards you with views of the ocean, rolling hills, and occasional cattle wandering down the middle of the road.

From Sete Cidades, continue on to Ribeira Grande, where you’ll find the beautiful Logoa do Fogo (Lake of Fire). Ribeira Grande is also home to two tea factories and a plantation—the only such plantation in Europe, courtesy of the island’s balmy climate. (It rarely gets below 50°F or above 80°F in the Azores.) Walk the fields, tour the factories and have a cup of tea in a stone-walled tea room.

Nearby, visit the Mulher de Capote (Cloaked Woman) liquor factory and sample liquors made from passionfruit, pineapple and other island fruits. (In the Azores the word “factory” generally means “quaint building surrounded by trees where local woman sort tea leaves or paste labels on liquor bottles.)

Stop for lunch at the posh Terra Nostra Garden Hotel, where the restaurant’s menu features cozido, a combination of meats and vegetables cooked in the ground by volcanic steam. If you’re not a meat-eater, try the fish—it’s always astoundingly fresh, thanks to the deep waters that surround the islands.

After lunch, take a dip in the hotel’s naturally heated pool, which was created by an American expatriate during the time of the Revolution, or walk the English garden planted by a French viscount to honor his parents.

A bit further east, you’ll come to the Furnas region, where geysers hiss from the ground and mineral water (in 23 different flavors) pours from taps as you walk the cobbled streets. (Note that some of these flavors are strong; raspberry-lime isn’t one of them.) The Furnas region is famous for its natural spas where travelers have come for decades to soak away their cares.

Running through the center of Furnas is a bridge with eight arches, one of São Miguel’s many architectural wonders. The Azoreans are a religious people and innumerable churches, chapels and cathedrals adorn the island. These range from the colorful little Holy Ghost chapels to magnificent cathedrals. If you’re lucky, you’ll land on the island during one of the many Holy Ghost festivals—a kind of “old home days” and religious holiday. These events vary from island to island, but invariably involve music, dancing, and free food.

On the second day of your trip, plan to spend some time in the great outdoors—on-land or on the ocean. The Azores are prime spots for whale and dolphin watching, practiced in an environmentally sensitive fashion. Scuba enthusiasts will find plenty of sites to explore, or try your hand at deep-sea fishing. For landlubbers, there are self-guided hiking and biking trails that range from easy to challenging. And don’t forget to bring your camera—São Miguel is a paradise for flowering plants, trees and colorful birds.

By the end of the weekend, you’ll feel at home in São Miguel. Of course, São Miguel is one of only nine islands in the Azores, each with their own unique flavor and charm. You’ll just have to come back another weekend.

The creators of Five Hotel – the Parisian design hotel with conceptual guestrooms based around the five senses – recently opened their newest numerically-inspired creation along the rue Berthollet in the Latin Quarter:  Seven Hotel.  (Don’t ask what happened to Six)

In atypical Parisian fashion, the hotel invites you on an out-of-the-ordinary space journey from the moment you enter the bubble-filled reception area. Three-dimensional images of bubbles float across huge television screens and drift off into the lounge and bar, where you can sip champagne and drink in the bubbly ambiance. (there’s nothing too literal or half-hearted about this concept)  On each successive level of the hotel, the future/sexy/Amsterdam whorehouse theme continues, transporting guests to an alternate reality with trippy one-of-a-kind decor from floor to ceiling, like illuminated Plexiglass furniture and perfume dispensers linked to TV channels to rooms bathed in starlit skies of blue fiber optic lighting.  A how-did-they-do-that highlight is the floating bed in the center of each room. Some rooms even include a levitating bathtub – now how did they do that?!?

Additionally, there are seven suites – get it? – each with a specific theme created by a different designer and aesthetically unrelated to the rest of the hotel.  Go figure. The Alice in Wonderland suite evokes an imaginary world featuring clocks and mirrors. The Marie-Antoinette suite imagines what the eccentric queen’s boudoir might look like today (hint:  leather), while the 007 suite puts you in the mind of the suave secret agent with a series of 007′s gadgets and an over-sized TV stocked with all the Bond films you could possibly want – and even some you don’t.  Other rooms have even more conceptual themes – the on/off suite and Once Upon A Time room are full of inventiveness and Proustian surprises.  But don’t let the suites fool you – the real wow factor comes in the spacey oversized singles.  I mean, c’mon, when was the last time you slept in a levitating bed?

Son et lumière literally translated means a sound and light show. The invention of the concept is credited to the curator of the Château de Chambord, Paul Robert-Houdin, who hosted the world’s first son et lumière in 1952. Typically presented at an outdoor venue of historic significance, like a chateau or a pyramid, special lighting effects are projected onto the façade of the building or ruin and synchronized with narration and music to dramatize the history of the place.  (And this being France, it’s all very “artistic,” too.)

These nighttime spectacles have rapidly become very popular. Call it the Christmas Lights Effect:  sometimes all anybody wants is a bit of old-fashioned ooh and ahh.  In France – particularly among the majestic chateaux of the Loire Valley – about 50 annual productions a year take place; primarily in the summer when there’s nothing to do but wait around for the grapes to ripen. So if you find yourself enjoying the wines by day, be sure to open your eyes once the sun goes down, too.

From the end of June through to mid-September, the Château de Chambord presents nightly performances of Chambord, Rêve de Lumières, which will carry you back to the Renaissance, when this vast fortress-like construction was a regular stop-over for the traveling court of François I.  Chambord has mastered the art of the sound and light show and this new creation, designed for all ages and cultures, uses music, dance and images to highlight the essence of this remarkable site.

The storming of the Bastille and the French Revolution, which led to the Declaration of the Rights of Man, was a tipping point in world history and one of the most significant events to take place in Europe since the fall of the Roman Empire.  And while not strictly a son et lumiere, the sound and light show at Cléry-Saint-André is a pretty spectacular spectacle, showcasing the tumultuous Revolutionary period  with magnificent costumes and spectacular decors.  Plus, Revolution or not, France has never betrayed its passion for fine food -  come early and you can take part in the Republican Banquet, featuring gastronomic specialties of the times.

For a change of pace head for the Château d’Azay-le-Rideau for an enchanted walk through the grounds of the château at night – it’s one of the most beautiful in the  Loire Valley.   Special lighting, sound and musical effects accompany you, along with projected images of weird and wonderful creatures. In this fabulous new kingdom of animals you’ll meet some strange sights, like a monumental hippogramophone and a ballet of amphibians. The poetic, digitally-enhanced show is a real treat for the eyes.

Juggling as many balls as I am juggling right now I am feeling a certain synergy – or is it sympathy – with Jean Cocteau, the 20th century renaissance man.  Actor, filmmaker, designer, boxing manager, writer, and homo, Cocteau was a self-defined poet who grappled with resolving the contradicting concepts of old and new during the birth of a modernism he helped to instigate.  The result was a complete paradox:  a classical avant-garde that issued forth with revolutionary work by Picasso, Diaghilev, Apollinaire, Gide, Satie, and Modigliani – as well as all those who would follow in their footsteps.

So how is it that Cocteau’s name has become but a footnote?   Maison Jean Cocteau – his  recently restored house in Milly-la-Forêt – should go a ways toward rectifying that as a place to remember and rediscover the artist’s work.

Purchased in 1947 with then-lover Jean Marais, Cocteau’s country house was the theater of creation for his most important works. Born within were the words of Testament d’Orphée and Requiem, along with numerous paintings, drawings, and pastels. He lived the final seventeen years of his life in the house with companion, Edouard Dermit, who after Cocteau’s death from a heart attack in 1963, watched over the objects that had made up  their daily surroundings

After five years of preparation and reconstruction, the Maison Jean Cocteau is now an important public expression of the artist’s tastes and private life.  The renovations led by architect François Magendie and the team of Dominique Païni-Nathalie Crinière (who organized the Jean Cocteau exhibit at the Centre Pompidou in 2003) have also allowed for the display of drawings from the Cocteau estate, which includes, in addition to the best of Cocteau, works by Picasso, Warhol, Modigliani, Buffet, Blanche, and Man Ray. Photographs, manuscripts, letters, newspapers, and posters recall important moments from the life and work of Cocteau, while a screening room on the ground floor shows films by and about the poet.

Just outside town, the Chapelle Saint-Blaise-des-Simples, with frescoes by Cocteau, houses his tomb. The opening of Maison Jean Cocteau gives new resonance to his elegant epitaph: Je reste avec vous.

Everybody knows the General Electric Building, the iconic structure that stands as a towering focal point of the Rockefeller Center building complex.  (Or at least everybody thinks they do)  Yet the other night while skyline-gazing on the magnificent rooftop of The Palace I discovered what turns out to be the original G.E. building – one of the most impressive examples of Byzantine-influenced Art Deco in the city – just a few short blocks  away to the east.

It was easy to get distracted by the southern view, which captured both the Chrysler and Empire State Buildings in one sweeping panorama.  However, looking to the east I quickly became enamored of the tall building on the corner of 51st and Lexington with Art Deco detailing in a warm rosy granite and an astounding Gothic latticework roof of carytids and sunbursts.  Thanks to the wonders of iPhone, I learned the 1931 skyscraper was first the home of RCA Victor, before becoming the General Electric Building.

Tucked in and behind St. Bart’s church, which fronts Park Avenue, the tower serves as an almost unofficial campanile, complementing the warm color of the church’s stonework while rising high above it.  It’s an unusual move for a commercial building and a very early example of contextual design.  And though by today’s standards the lobby would be considered small and sedate, there is a refined beauty in the details of  intricately vaulted ceilings and polished pink marble walls.

Even the subway entrance outside the building has a flash of Deco extravagance. Plus, notice the attention to detail afforded the glass lighting fixtures  along the perimeter.  Occupying such a small plot of land, the slim tower is adorned with a quantity of decorative detail that belies the building’s significance – which makes it the very quintessence of civic romance.

More than a century ago in 1882, Henry Villard, one of the nation’s most prominent financiers, commissioned McKim, Mead & White, the architectural firm spearheaded by Stanford White, to create a residence of singular style. The firm designed a mansion:  grand in scale, it appeared from the outside to be a cluster of brownstone townhouses in the neo-Italian Renaissance tradition, when in fact the interiors contained separate sections for several families.  Conceived after the Palazzo della Cancellaria in Rome, the stately structure on Madison Avenue between 50th and 51st Streets, is the only townhouse complex built for the railroad barons of the last century to have survived into the present day.   The Villard Houses are an historic city landmark as well as the grand entryway into The New York Palace, the hotel I’ve posted about over the past two days. Yet for many years it was all a well kept secret, closed to the public.

In the mid-Seventies, however, the Archdiocese of New York, who owned the land, cleared the way for a hotel to be de­veloped and enabled the famous residence to be accessible once again. To bridge the architectural gap between the landmarked buildings and the new ho­tel that would  join it, Emery Roth & Sons designed a monolithic tower of dark bronze, reflective glass and anodized aluminum that recedes from, rather than overpowers, the rosy-hued Villard Houses and integrates with its environment as it mirrors the surrounding cityscape.

By 1980, when the hotel opened as The Helmsley Palace, the stunningly restored interiors stood as a living tribute to the Gilded Age.  Recognized by architectural historians as one of the most beautiful rooms to be preserved from the period, the Stanford White-designed Madison Room is notable for its light green marble walls, pillars and huge fireplaces at both ends of the room, and the romantic murals by P.V. Galland. The dramatic, two-story Renaissance-style Gold Room is almost entirely done up in gold, with gilt ceilings, walls and wainscoting – it’s also the bar for the  hotel’s Michelin-starred restaurant:  Gilt, natch. Wall panels are richly adorned with images of musical instruments and garlands of foliage in low relief.  High above the north and south arches are two John La Farge lunette paintings, entitled “Art” and “Music,” that serve as dramatic focal points in the elaborate space.

The elegant, old-world ambiance of The Drawing Room is reflected in carved-walnut, coffered ceilings and walls, accented with gold ormolu.  Nineteenth-century oil portraits hang on the walls and Italian marble fireplaces flank both sides of the entrance.  The original gilt chandeliers still add a sparkling accent to the room’s decor.

McKim, Mead & White created the cozy Library from two smaller rooms during extensive remodeling in 1910-11.  The focal point of the book-lined, carved paneled room is a barrel-vaulted ceiling decorated with rosettes and shields bearing the colophons of famous publishers of the day.

The courtyard, the original Madison Avenue carriage entrance of the Villard Mansion, was redesigned during the restoration to incorporate motifs from the flooring of several 15th-century Italian cathedrals.  The Renaissance designs were carried out in pink, rose and black marble set into green and rose granite. Today, pedestrians enter the courtyard through an imposing set of iron gates and find one of the more civilized spaces in midtown to enjoy an al freco drink.

Beyond the graceful arches of the cloister facade is a two-story marble lobby, which visually unites the Villard Mansion with the hotel’s tower in a manner so harmonious that it is impossible to detect the point of fusion.  And how appropriate that the focal point of the upper lobby is a magnificently restored red Verona marble fireplace that was designed by Augustus Saint-Gaudens.  One of his best-known works, it’s adorned with the carved figures of Joy, Hospitality and hold your breath: Moderation.

Waking up at The Palace the next morning I was greeted with this view of the Chrysler building from my bed – which made it that much harder to get out of bed and start the day.