Fitness and swimming, Park Hyatt Vienna
Vienna’s newest luxury hotel, Park Hyatt Vienna, is indeed a resting place for today’s global-outlook luxury traveller. And keep up your regime, here. The basement wellness area is called Arany, for some reason. The spa reception is decorated with the original six-foot tall door of the safe from the building’s beginnings, as the regional bank. Stand in front of the safe and a window lets you see through into the 50-foot lap pool, which you can also see through a glass wall-section in the gym (which is, says the gal, one of the most customer-friendly, with superb equipment and obviously aimed at the super-fit).
Simply good food, beetroot salad….
The food, in The Bank, is also super-fit. I had a beetroot salad with Chioggia red beets, goat cheese, black walnuts and rowanberries, and followed it with grilled spring chicken marinated in herbs, with oven-roasted heirloom vegetables and sides of roasted mushroom with ricotta and a salad with herb vinaigrette. Wines, if asked by the glass, are stylishly poured from magnum, say, my night, a local red, Blaufränkeisch Alte Lagen, Judith Beck 2012 Neusiedlersee. This is healthy food, simply thought out and served by elegant young ladies in flattering fashion (no uniforms here, says the hotel GM, Monique Dekker, who is probably more at home in lycra, the fitness type).
.. and chicken
Monique Dekker met her husband Ben Distel when both were studying at The Hague hotel school, but he has now diverted into sports management. He runs a mail-order supply company for triathletes – it is actually an eye-opener to look at his site and you see the amazing technicalities that go into the running, swimming and biking that triathletes perform. Want to see the future of sport? This is it. But then I would also say that if you want to see the future of luxury hotels, this is a good place to start. All 143 bedrooms are unique in shape, but mine, 226, was 57 stairs up from the main floor elevator lobby.
Greek yoghurt and coffee, 4.30 am
You feel pampered – the Blaise Mautin toiletries are in big silver tubes rather than difficult-to-manage plastic bottles. You feel part of the locale – three minutes to the Am Hof Christmas market, ten to the Dom (cathedral) and 15 to the Spanish Riding School. You also feel confident that this luxury hotel will look after you, like an updated nanny for grown-ups. My wake-up call came at four (a.m. natch), with the nicest real-voice tone. My ordered yoghurt, and coffee, at 4.30 was way above expectation. Downstairs, the young and alert driver was already waiting, and we were off. Cannes, and ILTM, here I come…
