Hôtel Amour, Paris
This hotel, close to Montmartre, is an edgy Parisian love hideaway. Some of the boudoir-like rooms have ruby and black walls, others are lime-green or lilac with wacky modern art. The owner is a graffiti artist , which explains the art and the overall edgy feel. A real love nest.
Hi Hotel, Nice, French Riviera
Hi Hotel is a super-trendy icebox meets a living modern art installation. There are stand-alone baths, bamboo plants, spiral staircases, light projections on the walls of the bar (which attracts top Parisian DJs), and a minimalist overall feel. It also has a cool rooftop pool.
Château de Bagnols near Lyons, France
The Château de Bagnols is a grande dame of a building: a 13th-century, painstakingly cared-for castle with important Gothic fireplaces and priceless frescoes. It’s a mini-fortress in a picture-perfect hamlet just north of Lyons surrounded by beaujolais vineyards.
The château is incredibly sexy and romantic.It’s not the moat and a drawbridge, its antique four-poster beds, the Michelin-starred restaurant or the architectural details heaving with significance (though they all help), it’s the fact that the château feels intimate and discreet despite, on the face of it, being hugely imposing.
Hôtel Le Saint-James Bordeaux, France
There aren’t many hotel rooms that have a Harley Davidson inb them but sat atop the motorcyle you can pretending youi are zooming through Bordeaux’s vineyards. You can see the way through the vines from the light wood bed, which is perfectly positioned to look out through a wall of picture windows. If you tire of this stunning view, a press of the button and the shades come down over the window. All 18 rooms and suites have the same vista, some beds built low to look through the vines, others high to look over them, and also taking in the hotel’s sleek pool.
Hotel Le Saint-Hames is no ordinary hotel, it is a sexy stylish and modern.
Designed by the French architect Jean Nouvel who took his inspiration from tobacco-drying sheds, the metal grille exterior of this hotel, ten minutes from the airport at Bordeaux, rises up starkly from the vines. Inside, there are more treats, most notably in the form of Michel Portos, a two-Michelin-star chef who serves up gastronomic delicacies using locally sourced produce in the restaurant.But nothing beats the Harley — except perhaps the hot-tub suite, at the top of the hotel.