Birds are chirping and geese are honking on the far side of the fairway as I raise the sash window of my vast guestroom at Maften Hall in rural Northumberland. It’s pleasant to wake with a view overlooking a championship standard golf course.
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The Douro Valley is known for being the home of the world’s first demarcated wine region and the area from which grapes are sourced to produce Port.
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Erfurt is an attractive, history-rich city with 210,000 inhabitants. Several of the Hotel Zumnorde’s 56 guestrooms and suites overlook Anger, a pedestrianised shopping street in the heart of Thuringia's state capital. Don’t believe anyone who says you shouldn’t look back on that particular shop-lined thoroughfare.
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Abode Hotel Chester is a smart, modern hotel located an easy ten minute stroll from the half-timbered buildings of the city’s historic centre. The hotel overlooks England’s oldest active racecourse and the distant hills of Wales.
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“Did you hear the whales singing during the night?” asked a smiling, fellow guest as I headed downstairs for breakfast at the Doctor’s House Inn and Spa at Green’s Harbour in Newfoundland and Labrador.
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The Hotel Gotthard, at Lech am Arlberg, has been in the hands of the Walch family since 1931 and is currently run by Clemens and Nicole, a husband and wife team. Nicole originates from South Australia and like the Gotthard’s receptionists and waitresses, wears a traditional Austrian Dirndl while working.
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There’s something uplifting about waking up in the tropics, pulling back the curtains of a luxury bedroom and opening the door, stepping down from the veranda then wandering barefoot on a white sand beach in the early morning sunlight.
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Looking out from Menara Kuala Lumpur’s observation deck, 276 metres above the Malaysia's buggest city, I’m surprised to learn that KL, the abbreviation by which locals know this conurbation, was awarded city status as recently as 1972. With the sun beginning to set, I’m at a prime location to appreciate this dynamic city’s evening skyline.
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Looking around Muscat it’s difficult to believe that just over a generation ago Oman was a country without a single luxury hotel and barely 10km of tarmac road. Times have changed markedly since July 1970, when Qaboos bin Said became the Sultan of Oman.
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Johann Wolfgang von Goethe used to sip Madeira wine in the cellar, Adolf Hitler stayed at least 35 times and there’s a secret tunnel dating from World War II and leading from the cellar under the adjacent market place
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