Hotel Club Du Lac Tanganyika, Bujumbura, Burundi

I had the great pleasure of traveling to Bujumbura, Burundi for work last week.  I'm embarrassed to admit that when I was told I'd be traveling to Burundi, I had to look it up on a map.  Now I know that Burundi is a small East African country bordered to the east by Tanzania and to the west by the Democratic Republic of Congo.  It is most closely connected to its northern neighbor, Rwanda, with which it has a shared history of Belgian colonialism and a brutal civil war between Hutus and Tutsis.  In Burundi, I expected to find poverty and corruption, which indeed is very present, but what I did not expect to find was a stylish hotel sitting on the lovely coast of Lake Tanganyika. (Watch out for hippos!)   

Bujumbura has a very small community of foreigners and while there I met the owner of Hotel Club du Lac, Alfredo Frojo, at a reception at the home of the American Embassy's Charge D'Affairs.  (I may not get invited to important parties in Los Angeles, but I do in Burundi!)  Alfredo, a chic Napolitano, told me that he bought the hotel in 1993, a few months before the start of the civil war.  The hotel was shut down and did not open again for more than 10 years.  I don't know when the hotel was originally built, but there are such fantastic 1960's details that I'll assume it was during that decade.  I'm obsessed with the font/graphics and odd architectural elements and would love to know more if anyone can find it.  This hotel is a perfect example of my favorite design category, what I like to call Mid-Century Colonial Modern, which the French, Belgians, Spanish, Portuguese and British did a great deal of around the world when they weren't busy exploiting resources and fomenting ethnic conflict.

p.s. Have you seen the 2006 French movie OSS 117: Cairo Nest of Spies?  It's a French spy spoof made by the same cast and crew as The Artist. It takes place in 1960's Cairo and the set design optimizes Mid-Century Colonial Modern. (If you have a better name for this, I'm open to suggestions.)

Coqui Coqui, Tulum, Mexico

Coqui Coqui is a small, 5-room boutique hotel on the beach in Tulum, Mexico.  It started with one room, a small shop and a perfumerie, and then slowly grew, adding one room at a time, making the space feel organic and as ancient as the ruins.  For our honeymoon, this could not have been a better choice.  As far as I'm concerned, 5 rooms is the perfectly sized hotel.  With so few rooms it's possible to talk to the people who work there.  Our experience would never have been as great without Bruno, a chatty Argentinean musician whose enthusiastic addition of dulce de leche to our daily breakfast spread of fruit and bread felt like five star honeymoon treatment.  

I believe these photos do a thorough job of illustrating why the Coqui Coqui experience was such a dream, but it is worth mentioning that the whole place smells unbelievable. The mix of ocean air, sand and perfumes made of coconut and eucalyptus evoke a deep, almost visceral, feeling of relaxation.   When I arrived home I was legitimately sad to throw my clothes in the washing machine and part with the last remnants of Coqui Coqui. 

p.s. For once, this post features only photos I took.  Would really love to do more of this.

    

Wedding + Honeymoon

 

Next weekend I'm off to get married!  The big event at El Capitan Canyon Resort in Santa Barbara is sure to be great fun and then we're off to Mexico - Coqui Coqui in Tulum and The Tides in Playa Del Carmen. And for those of you (shamefully or not) watching the soul-sucking program The Biggest Loser, you know that this is the season of No Excuses.  So I'm taking that to heart and come April, I'm back in action.  See you on the other side!

Photos: El Capitan Canyon Resort, Coqui Coqui from Elle.com, and The Tides

Discovery Houseboat, Kerala, India

First post from Kerala!  For our last night in India we decided to splurge on a private houseboat.  While staying at the lovely Malabar House in Fort Cochin when we first arrived, we discovered that the hotel owners, Malabar Escapes, also had a houseboat that traveled the famous Kerala backwaters.

The houseboat, called Discovery, was more than I could have ever imagined.  It possessed the same exceptional service, fantastic food and commitment to local artists that we found at the Malabar House, but this time, it was all ours!   We had our own chef and service for three meals in our small living room.  The quiet sounds of intermittent rain and local birds made it a perfect place to nap and read and feel that after all the air/car/ferry traveling, rickshaw saree hunting and wedding celebrating that we were finally, really, on vacation.

The one-bedroom boat docked from another Malabar Escapes' property, Privacy, and as there were no other guests there, we had full access to the the pool in the early evening.  We spent the afternoon and next morning passing traditional boats, patches of water lilies, and small villages, and joking that Nora and I were on a romantic honeymoon together.   

In all seriousness though, I would highly recommend a visit to Discovery as a honeymoon destination.  I can only imagine what kind of peace this place could bring after months of maddening wedding planning.