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The Hotel Amour is located in a small street between metro St Georges and metro Pigalle - although I prefer la station St Georges, with its discrete petite place, the statue of Gavarni, and the beautiful buildings around. It’s on my favourite metro line, Mairie d’Issy - Porte de la Chapelle, that crosses Paris from south to north, going through Montparnasse, St Germain, Pigalle, Barbès and Montmartre, and back again. The Hotel Amour is adjacent to the Honda motorbike dealer. My friend the photographer Henry Roy brought me there once for lunch a couple of years ago. On my list ever since. Used to be a brothel and has since been reconverted into an affordable boutique hotel by the artist André Saraiva of Le Baron fame. You can still rent for half-day though. I like the bistro ambiance at the Amour, good food, good crowd, good mix of ‘gens du quartier’, guests, and the fashion set. The bay window opens to a back garden. Rocks, pond and red fishes. The smoke lingers and dogs rest under the tables. Glossy black walls in the corridors, glossy red lacquer in some rooms, naked light bulbs, SAS novel collections, old bathtubs, Playboy magazines, robots, whimsical flea market decorations and comfortable beds. No phones or TVs in the rooms, who cares, there’s wireless downstairs. We played foosball in the basement and wrote our names on the toilet walls. 

Hotelamourparis.fr 

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No road. A thirty minute boat ride takes you from Boca de Tomatlan to the bottom of a hill near the small village of Yelapa. You then walk up the meandering path while the mules carry your luggage. Mules never fall. All day long they quietly negotiate the path’s thousand steps. Stone after stone, they helped build a Verana that wouldn’t exist without them. Scattered in the jungle on top of the mountain, eight hand-made bungalows. No names, no arrows. Purely organic, incredibly beautiful. Watsu pool, papaya and avocado facials, banana wash and carefully hand-picked objects. The pool is the colour of stone, constantly refilled by the source coming from the mountain. There is a coati hiding in the bushes. At night, candles light the tables overlooking the bay. Only a few candles. Verana is real.

Verana.com

Coming soon…